Oil still coming ashore nearly a year after the blowout.
Nearly one year in after the explosion and blowout on the Deepwater Horizon, Coast residents say the disaster is still wreaking havoc with their lives. New words are being invented to describe what is happening: "chronic re-oiling" as submerged oil mats break apart and and produce "surface residue balls" that wash onto beaches and into marshes. Coast Guard Commander Dan Lauer says the residual oil poses no health risk to humans (but it does look nasty on the beaches, and might offend tourists...) so cleanups are being continued before the hurricane season, when a storm would churn more sludge onto the shore.
Lauer said Thursday that crews are experimenting with different types of sonar and radar to locate the mats resting on the sea floor. They are typically about 300 square feet and have been found from Louisiana to Florida, he said.
The mats have been easier to find in the relatively clear waters of the eastern Gulf than in the murky waters off Louisiana's coast, Lauer said.
"It's very difficult to find them, and then to remove them is a whole different matter," Lauer said. "We're doing the research and development as we go."
Oil-choked mats of marshgrass in Barataria Bay and Pass a Loutre are a particular problem, and crews have been cutting back the grasses in an attempt to encourage oil degradation.
"There is absolutely some damage to the wetlands, but we're also seeing good regrowth," he said. "If the root system stays healthy, the grass seems to grow back very well."
But residents of Grand Isle have not been impressed, maintaining that the Coast Guard is performing cleanup for the TV cameras only, and the real work goes undone.
"How come we don't see this every day and not just when the TV cameras are here?" said Dean Blanchard, who owns a seafood-processing plant on the barrier island.
"How much are they paid to hold up shovels?" asked a woman.
Lauer said the sand-sifting "is typical of the work that we are doing on a daily basis."
"We had them do it here so the media wouldn't have to run all over the beach to see how it's being done," he said.
Lauer says cleanup will continue through the hurricane season, that a reassessment on more cleaning will be made. If more oil comes ashore, he says the Coast Guard will be there to clean that up too.
"Regardless of where the oil came from, we are mandated to take care of it," he said. "We'll be here as long as it takes."
And how is the continuing impact of the spill affecting the non-tourists? You know, the things that live here, like... say, things IN the ocean? Well, BP says it is in no way responsible for dead oysters. Wasn't their fault.It was all that fresh water that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and state officials diverted from the Mississippi River in a futile attempt to keep the oil out. They can't be responsible for a few dead oysters. Why, oysters aren't cute and cuddly. Who cares about them?
Well, maybe the oyster fishermen do. And the Gulf food chain certainly does. But a senior BP official says the diversion was not approved by the Unified Command overseaing the response, and BP cannot be blamed.
"Having been a part of this response since the beginning, I can tell you categorically that the Coast Guard indicated that it was not necessary and was not seen as a viable response technique," Mike Utsler, chief operating officer of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, said Friday. "As a Unified Command, we saw this as a not-needed exercise, and the state still chose to pursue that course of action."
Utsler said that's one reason why BP has so far refused to pay to restore oyster beds with cultch, the shell material on which oyster eggs attach and grow in the spring and fall.
A second reason, Utsler said, is research released this week by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists that he said showed that oysters process and expel oil contaminants so quickly that they would not have been hurt by the spill.
"I can only quote the fact that there's an article this week by NOAA... that there's no evidence that oysters have been tainted by or retained any residual oil. And that's testing not only by NOAA, but it was by FDA, EPA and the five states that all participated," he said.
Jindal's coastal adviser, Garret Graves, immediately went on the offensive, stating that the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers (long known for their stellar environmental work) and BP agreed that the flow diversion would be effective.
"BP's comments prove what we have been saying all along -- BP thinks that they are unilaterally in charge of the Deepwater Horizon disaster response and recovery," said Graves, who is chairman of the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. "Neither the Coast Guard, that was supposed to be in charge, nor BP objected to the use of diversions.
"We had two choices: oil on our oysters or water on our oysters," he said, adding that the freshwater flushing technique was part of the state's existing oil spill contingency plan. "I'd choose water every time."
Well, if I remember my biology, oysters are estuary/tidal range dwellers, and are euryhaline - able to tolerate changes in salinity. But too much fresh water weakens oysters, and when they are in fresh water only, they die.
Utsler's comments came hours after Graves and other state officials held a news conference to slam BP for not paying for cultch projects, and to announce that the state had increased by $2 million, to $4 million, the amount of money it had found in various departments to pay for the projects.
"We have been shaking out the couches at our agency looking for funds to help ensure a healthy spat set," said Randy Pausina, who oversees fisheries programs at the state Department of Wildlife & Fisheries.
The large amount of fresh water flowing over oyster beds caused significant damage to both private and public oyster beds, said Earl Melancon, an oyster biologist at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.
The worst damage occurred in the upper reaches of Barataria Bay and Breton Sound, where mortality rates neared 100 percent, he said. The percentage of dead oysters dropped off to the south, as the fresh water mixed with saltier water from the Gulf of Mexico.
That meant the average mortality was between 30 to 40 percent in Barataria Bay and 50 to 80 percent in Breton Sound, he said.
So...oil=dead. Lots of fresh water=dead. Such a Catch-22... How about we work on not having a blowout, and don't have the oil in the first place? Just a thought.
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