The sunken and broken barge that sits in the Mississippi River,  just below the Crescent City Connection(CCC) that links New Orleans with its westbank, "burped" 60 barrels of fuel oil early this morning, oil that has once again, polluted the river, drinking water, and threatened wildlife.

To complicate matters further, oil has been discovered in mud dredged at the mouth of the river.

Back in 1988 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, I can recall at least a few weeks of steady coverage by both the three major networks and cable news (just CNN at the time) of the disaster, its environmental impact, and efforts to clean it up.

But the fuel oil spill that happened in Louisiana earlier this week proves to be a much larger disaster with farther-reaching consequences--yet for some news briefs I've seen on NBC Nightly News and a couple of cable channels, there hasn't been the major coverage it should be getting. Why aren't the MSM taking it seriously?

And scorpiorising says,

it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn't more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

The fuel spill in the Mississippi River now stretches 100 miles, almost to the Gulf of Mexico, and a sickly oil smell hangs over the city. According to a WWL TV news report, an SPCA group from Houston has set up a wildlife recovery effort. I don't want to pass judgement yet, but it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn't more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

This is a breaking story, and this diary will be short at first, to be filled in later.

bayoubuzz link

Location (h/t Mogolori in another thread)
The accident, in which a barge being pushed by the tugboat Mel Oliver spilled at least 419,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil, happened under the Crescent City Connection Bridge.

Image from MSNBC -thanks Terre

Sorry for the short blast, but the Picayune just posted a piece updating their efforts to find out just what exactly John McCain is doing in New Orleans today.

Setting aside rumors (mine, mostly) that Old Grand Dad will actually be announcing Gov. Bobby Jindal as his running mate, the McCain campaign has been running in circles trying to figure out some meaningful appearance to counteract the images of Barack Obama ruling the world stage.

In 1989, Exxon Mobil caused the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The accident, which dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of marine wildlife, and caused 33,000 Alaskans to file for compensation for economic loss and punitive damages.

They are still waiting to be paid.

It seems paradoxical that, in an age where it is apparent that big oil represents an outdated form of energy supply, oil companies are still trying to rake in the big bucks. After being charged in 1994 for punitive damages, Exxon, preparing to launch a long, drawn out fight against the decision, put aside the amount they owed in a private account; now, the amount that Exxon owes essentially equals the interest that they've made from that account. Fossil fuels represent our past, not our future, so why would the Supreme court come to big oil's rescue?

John McCain just set helped us win Florida and set up our next commercials to run in those respected markets from now until Novemeber.  Please be sure to watch the video at the end of this diary.  It was well made!!!

Imagine what it would do to Florida's economy?

(Apologies for the short diary, but there didn't seem to be any point to adding padding.)

Golden Gate Audubon is looking for volunteers over the next few days to help enter data re:  the Cosco Busan accident last November.  Since I know that my fellow Bay Area Kossacks are a) concerned about the enviroment, b) wanting to bring the guilty parties to justice in the aftermath of this event, and c) computer literate and fast on the keyboards, it just seemed natural to post this here.

Wouldn't it be a good way to celebrate Earth Day?  Make a difference!

More info below the jump

There's a couple of big oil spills in process now.  

One in the North Sea is just reported in the last few hours.  The volume of oil reported spilled is about 4 times the size of the recent San Francisco Bay spill, and about 1/40th the size of the 11 million gallon Exxon Valdez spill.  But these are only initial reports from the last few hours.  There's likely to be revisions over time:

"The oil spill is as big as all the small spills in the past 10 or 12 years put together," the head of the Norwegian branch of WWF, Rasmus Hansson, told AFP.

The one in South Korea is a lot bigger.

About 10,500 tons of crude leaked into the Yellow Sea when a drifting barge carrying a construction crane smashed into the anchored 147,000-ton Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit and holed it in three places last Friday.

This Week:

1. Double Fudge Spill

2. Grin and Bear it

3. Peak Fish?

4. Border Boar attack

5. Bicycle Clown Brigade

6. Shopocalypse

7. B-Boys

8. Molotov Chili

9. Go Veg

The recent San Franciso Bay dangerous fossil fuel (oil, this time) leak released 58,000 gallons of oil.   There are 42 gallons of dangerous fossil fuel oil in a gallon, and 7.2 barrels in a metric ton of oil, roughly, depending on source.

Conversion factors can be found here in the ORNL bioenergy pages.

Thus this accident involved 191 metric tons of oil.

The other major dangerous fossil fuel accident going on right now is the Black Sea disaster, involving 2000 metric tons of oil, or about ten times as much.

have been killed in that "other spill" that is now just reaching our media's attention.

The ecological disaster that is unfurling in the Black Sea, is just disheartening.

More than 30,000 birds and countless fish have been killed in an "ecological catastrophe" wrought by thousands of tons of oil from a tanker that broke apart in a heavy storm near the Black Sea, the governor of the region said Monday.

Birds weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel oil hopped weakly along the shore or sat helplessly in the sand. Workers with pitchforks and shovels started the backbreaking labor of gathering up vast clumps of oil mixed with sand and seaweed. - SFGate

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


click to enlarge

The oil slick as seen looking south at the east side of Angel Island.  San Francisco Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers. (Click to enlarge.)

Last week, history repeated itself in the San Francisco Bay when a container ship leaked 58,000 gallons of fuel oil after colliding with one of the Bay Bridge towers.  It is the biggest oil spill in the Bay since 1996, when 40,000 gallons of fuel oil escaped into the Bay from a ship spill in a dry dock area.

The November 7 oil spill resulted from "human error":

"There were skilled enough individuals on board this ship," said Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard's top official in California. "They didn't carry out their missions correctly."

Coast Guard officials declined to lay blame on any specific individual or provide further details on the mistakes that were made Wednesday morning aboard the 926-foot ship Cosco Busan.

Investigators were focusing on issues surrounding the ship's official protocol for safely navigating out of San Francisco Bay, including possible communication problems between the crew, the pilot guiding the ship and Vessel Traffic Service, the Coast Guard station that monitors the bay's shipping traffic.

As you can imagine, the spill is already having tragic ecological effects, killing and sickening the wildlife in its wake (click here for a map of affected areas).

Today's update from the San Francisco Chronical elaborates:

A major oil spill is making San Francisco Bay look like a dirty bathtub, and the ring of black that soils the shoreline is likely to pose dire consequences for birds, mice, ducks, fish and the smallest of aquatic creatures for years to come, scientists say.

Hidden under rocks or lying deep in the sediment and soil in wetlands and the bottom of the bay, the residue from 58,000 gallons of ship oil could remain for years, daubing creatures with a fatal blob or contaminating the food chain.

"It's pretty awful," said John McCosker, a senior scientist at the California Academy of Sciences.

While the long-term impact of Wednesday's spill from the Cosco Busan container ship is yet to be known, one scientist assessing it said the accident is similar to the last big oil spill in the bay.

There are many, many concerns.  For example, the oil will affect herring spawning, and therefore everything that depends on herring;  it's the same case with juvenile crabs.  The oil affects small mammals in the same way that it affects birds (increasing heat loss, for example).  The list goes on and on, and it's obvious that it will create a ripple effect in the food chain.

No one is debating the immediate effects of the spill on the Bay's wildlife.  And, depending on the success of the cleanup, the long-term effects may vary in magnitude... but there will be lasting effects, and scientists are extremely concerned about the environmental persistence of the oil.

More about the spill (and what you can do) below the fold...

I was born and raised in San Francisco.  I know I mention it a lot.  For one, it's slightly unusual as a lot of the people who live here now were not born here.  Two, it speaks to my deep love for the land and the ocean here. That's why this oil spill is so heartbreaking to me.

I can't believe that Ocean Beach, the first place I ever saw the mighty ocean, is closed. Baker beach where I used to go with my first boyfriend is closed. The water nearest to me in Berkeley is contaminated.  I would have to travel at least an hour or more to find an uncontaminated beach right now.

Angel Island is closed:

Of course loss of my own enjoyment pales in comparison to what's happening to the wildlife.

Following Wednesday's 58,000-gallon oil spill caused by a ship which crashed into the Bay Bridge (apparently the first time such a ship has ever done so since the bridge was built,) the Bay Area oil spill cleanup effort seems to be crawling along while hundreds of volunteers are being told to stay home and do nothing.

Volunteers who refuse remain idle are being threatened with arrest:

It was much the same in Marin County, where Sigward Moser led a 30-person volunteer group - including 20 monks-in-training from the Mill Valley Zen Center - onto Muir Beach on Friday. For his efforts, he was detained and handcuffed.

I'll tell you what would have happened:   Most of the DME would have evaporated before it hit the water.   That which got into the water would have completely dissolved, maybe killing some phytoplankton and a bucket full of fish within 100 meters of the spilling ship.

The DME would have rapidly established equilibrium with the atmosphere and in a short time, probably less than half a day, it would have mostly diffused into the atmosphere.   The half-life of DME in the atmosphere is about 5 days.   Within two months, less than 0.02% of it would remain, the missing material having decomposed to give carbon dioxide (ultimately) and water.

That should conclude this diary, but let me say something else because every single dangerous fossil fuel accident brings me to the point of rage. None of these accidents are necessary and all of them result from stupidity and conservativism, conservatives being a set of people who think that nothing should be done the first time or that dogma, not data, justifies ignorance.   And let's be clear.   Not all conservatives in the energy discussion are REPUBLICANS.  

Accidents happen.

Brandt's Cormorants, Seal Rock, San Francisco

The first reports about the Cosco Busan's collision with the Bay Bridge weren't too worrisome.  The bridge wasn't harmed; they said drivers wouldn't even have felt the impact, as it just hit some protective bumpers around the base of the tower.  A fuel leak was reported, but it was small - only about 140 gallons.  Unfortunately, that number turned out to be off by 57,860 gallons.

Follow me below the jump for updates, ways you can help, and photos of some of the birds and areas affected.  ("Before" photos, I should add.)