BP and the government say the spill is fast disappearing — but dramatic new science reveals that its worst effects may be yet to come.
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Thursday, July 29, will mark the 100-day anniversary of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf Coast. There is no word yet on whether the temporary cap will continue to be effective in damming the flow of oil, and Tuesday’s headlines saw another oil spill — caused by a tow boat accident in a nearby bay — that may impede cleanup efforts on the larger front. Considered to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the crisis has prompted a wave of recovery and restoration efforts, most of which focus not only on immediate relief, but on future solutions as well. HuffPost Impact has compiled a list of ways you can help contribute to the cleanup and save local wildlife.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“What happened here, and where were you?”
Foul weather
Oil coats a barrier on the shoreline as high winds and waves caused the cancellation of cleanup operations on the beach on July 7, 2010 in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Foul weather continues to hamper oil cleanup operations on parts of the Gulf Coast. Workers are hoping to get back to work soon to help contain the Deepwater Horizon spill which has sent millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion on the drilling platform.
We pray that BP and the government are able to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. We pray for the clean-up, that they discover ways that are effective and that the resources are provided to do it. We pray for the fishermen and their families – especially the Vietnamese fishermen, some of whom are battling suicidal feelings. We pray for the restaurant workers who are being laid off because there is no catch to prepare. We pray for the offshore workers who are laid off because of the moratorium on drilling.
And we pray for our brothers and sisters in the Gulf, that they will not lose heart. Amen.
Based on Terri Rousey’s story on the God’s Politics blog via Sojourner
From CNBC
With the Gulf of Mexico oil spill now the worst in US history, public pressure is growing on BP to contain and remove the ever-spreading slick. There are numerous potential cleanup methods, some that are already being used and others that are… well, rather non-traditional.
BP has said it had received nearly 10,000 suggestions on alternate cleanup methods by the end of May and is seriously looking at 700 of them. With estimates of the total spilled so far ranging from around 700,000 barrels to over 2.5 million barrels, it will be a massive job.
So, what are some of the techniques—both traditional and non-traditional—that could be used to clean up the oil spill? Click ahead to find out!
By Paul Toscano and Daniel Bukszpan
Posted 9 June 2010
As seen on CNBC
“With an increasing number of natural disasters like flooding, fires and hurricanes, combined with man-made catastrophes like the Gulf oil spill, it is time that we move strategically to make sure that our national parks have the resources they need to recover.”
For more information check out the the parks’ website.
Submerging Execs Could Be ‘Win-Win’
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – At a conference of oil leak experts in Washington today, attendees proposed plugging the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic spill.
Threatened birds in the Gulf.
Whether you’re trained or not, Deepwater Horizon Response (the official site of the response effort) recommends contacting specific state disaster coordination agencies for the affected states. The National Audubon Society is accepting volunteer registrations on its web site. In Louisiana, LA Gulf Response is coordinating efforts from the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways for you to help.
Donate: Buy a special edition bottle of Dawn (look for the animal on the label), then head to Dawn’s website to enter the code from your bottle. For every code entered, Dawn will donate $1 (with a goal of $500,000) to wildlife groups like the Marine Mammal Center and the International Bird Rescue Research Center. Have something more substantial in mind? Put larger donations to work through any of the groups already mentioned in this article.
Sponsor a volunteer: Do you know any local veterinarians, zoo staffers or wildlife experts who would like to make the trip to help out? Contribute (or create!) a fund to help get them there. You can get invaluable animal handling experience of your own if you volunteer to help pick up the slack at their workplace while they’re gone.
Report oiled wildlife and oil damage: If you live along the Gulf Coast and spot oiled wildlife in need of rescue or notice oil damage, report it online or call 1-866-557-1401 for oiled wildlife (messages are checked hourly), 1-800-440-0858 for oil damage, or 1-866-448-5816 for oiled shorelines.
See the entire story about volunteer opportunities compiled by Change.org.
If you or someone you know is interested in volunteering, please call the Deepwater Horizon Response Volunteer Request Line at 1-866-448-5816 or visit the Web sites below.
State specific volunteer opportunities:
- Louisiana: http://www.volunteerlouisiana.gov/
- Mississippi: http://www.volunteermississippi.org/1800Vol/OpenIndexAction.do
- Florida: http://www.volunteerfloridadisaster.org/
- Alabama: http://www.servealabama.gov/2010/default.aspx
Volunteer Hotlines:
- Report oiled shoreline or request volunteer information:
(866)-448-5816 - Submit your vessel as a vessel of opportunity skimming system:
(281) 366-5511
Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill laps around the mouth of the Mississippi River delta in this May 24, 2010, image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The oil appears silver, while vegetation is red. Image credit: Jesse Allen/NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
Two NASA satellites are capturing images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which began April 20, 2010, with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. This series of images reveals a space-based view of the burning oil rig and the ensuing oil spill, through May 24. The imagery comes from the MODIS instruments aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. The oil slick appears grayish-beige in these images. The shape of the spill changes due to weather conditions, currents and the use of oil-dispersing chemicals.
The images in this video were selected to show the spill most clearly. The full image archive is available at http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov. For more information and imagery about the oil spill, visit NASA’s Oil Spill website. Imagery and information about the oil spill is also available on NASA’s Earth Observatory Natural Hazards website.
NASA Satellites’ View of Gulf Oil Spill Over Time.
Sunlight illuminated the lingering oil slick off the Mississippi Delta on May 24, 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image the same day.
NASA’s Terra Satellites Sees Spill on May 24
Sunlight illuminated the lingering oil slick off the Mississippi Delta on May 24, 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image the same day.
Oil smoothes the ocean surface, making the Sun’s reflection brighter near the centerline of the path of the satellite, and reducing the scattering of sunlight in other places. As aAs a result, the oil slick is brighter than the surrounding water in some places (image center) and darker than the surrounding water in others (image lower right).
The tip of the Mississippi Delta is surrounded by muddy water that appears light tan. Bright white ribbons of oil streak across this sediment-laden water.
Tendrils of oil extend to the north and east of the main body of the slick. A small, dark plume along the edge of the slick, not far from the original location of the Deepwater Horizon rig, indicates a possible controlled burn of oil on the ocean surface.
To the west of the bird’s-foot part of the delta, dark patches in the water may also be oil, but detecting a manmade oil slick in coastal areas can be even more complicated than detecting it in the open ocean.
When oil slicks are visible in satellite images, it is because they have changed how the water reflects light, either by making the Sun’s reflection brighter or by dampening the scattering of sunlight, which makes the oily area darker. In coastal areas, however,similar changes in reflectivity can occur from differences in salinity (fresh versus salt water) and from naturally produced oils from plants.
Michon Scott
NASA’s Earth Observatory
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
From the Daily Beast
A pod of Bottle Nose dolphins swim under the oily water Chandeleur Sound, La., Thursday, May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.
By DR. REESE HALTER for MercuryNews.com
Some of the dispersants and oil have entered the Loop Current — a powerful conveyor belt that carries the warm Gulf water through the Straits of Florida. It contains 80 times the volume of water of all rivers combined on Earth.
It then joins the Gulf Stream Current, which barrels past Miami carrying one billion cubic feet of water every second. As it passes Georgia and then South Carolina it triples its volume, and once it reaches Cape Hatteras, N.C. it heads out into the Atlantic toward the only open sea on the globe, the warm Saragossa Sea.
Eventually, the Gulf Stream becomes the North Atlantic Current, destined for Western Europe where its fan-like tendrils become the Norwegian Current.
The moment the dispersant and/or oil enter the Atlantic, our oil spill becomes global.
Enric Sala is a marine ecologist who fell in love with the sea growing up on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Witnessing the harm people do to the oceans led him to dedicate his career to understand and find ways to mitigate human impacts on marine life. This is from his TED talk.
Scientific studies recommend that at least 20 percent of the ocean should be protected. The estimated range is between 20 and 50 percent for a series of goals of biodiversity and fish enhancement and resilience.
Now, is this possible? People would ask: How much would that cost? Well, let’s think about how much we are paying now to subsidize fishing. 35 billion dollars per year. Many of these subsidies go to destructive fishing practices. Well, there are a couple estimates of how much if would cost to create a network of protected areas covering 20 percent of the ocean that would be only a fraction of what we are now paying, the government hands out to a fishery that is collapsing. People are losing their jobs because the fisheries are collapsing. A creation of a network of reserves would provide direct employment for more than a million people plus all the secondary jobs and all the secondary benefits.
So how can we do that? If it’s so clear that these savings accounts are good for the environment and for people, why don’t we have 20, 50 percent of the ocean? And how can we reach that goal? Well, there are two ways of getting there. The trivial solution is to create really large protected areas like the Chagos Archipelago. The problem is that we can create these large reserves only in places where there are no people, where there is no social conflict, where the political cost is really low, and the economic costs is also low. And a few of us, a few organizations in this room and elsewhere are working on this.
Legendary ocean researcher Sylvia Earle shares astonishing images of the ocean — and shocking stats about its rapid decline — as she makes her TED Prize wish: that we will join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.
Riki Ott
When Riki Ott heard about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it brought back a nightmare she’s lived with for the past 21 years. Riki was fishing for salmon in Cordova, Alaska in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground and dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. At the time, she hadn’t told many people in Alaska that she had a PhD in marine toxicology, but that knowledge helped her as the community took stock of the damage and made sure the voices of the fishermen were heard. Now she’s in Louisiana to help citizens and fishermen there deal with the aftermath of the Gulf spill. One of Riki’s biggest concerns is about the potential dangers of chemicals dispersants. From “The Story” with Dick Gordon on American Public Media. You can hear the podcast.
See more photos of Riki and her work.
From “The Story” with Dick Gordon, American Public Media. You can hear the podcast:
If you have Google Earth you can see how big the spill is compared to the size of your town. This map puts it in perspective for those who like a visual representation. For those of us in Michigan … it would be from the Big Lake to half way across the state and down to the Indiana border.
A meter from PBS that shows different scenarios on how much oil is going into the Gulf of Mexico.
Nobody knows for certain how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since last month’s oil rig explosion. What we do have are estimates — from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, from outside experts, from British Petroleum — of how fast crude is flowing out of two remaining leaks.
by Greg Palast for Truthout.org
I’ve seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon’s name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was … British Petroleum. That’s important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.
Deepwater Horizon in flames before sinking. Photo provided by D.BecnelTankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn’t happen but it does. And when it does, the name of the game iscontainment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf over a week ago, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (“OSRP”) which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.
What’s so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.
That’s because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.
To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called “boom.” Quickly surround a spill or leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple.
For those who have not heard enough about BP’s doings:
by Greg Palast for Buzzflash.com
With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there’s no space in the press for British Petroleum’s latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. Still is.
On Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after “procedures weren’t properly implemented” by BP operators, say state inspectors. “Procedures weren’t properly implemented” is, it seems, BP’s company motto.
Few Americans know that BP owns the controlling stake in the trans-Alaska pipeline; but, unlike with the Deepwater Horizon, BP keeps its Limey name off the Big Pipe.
There’s another reason to keep their name off the Pipe: their management of the pipe stinks. It’s corroded, it’s undermanned and “basic maintenance” is a term BP never heard of.
How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it: bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.