Oil Everywhere -- Southwings & Riverkeeper update

[nashville_brook]

http://birding.typepad.com/gulf/2010/08/oil-everywhere.html

More photos here:
http://www.rsairphoto.com/

Oil Everywhere

In the last four days I have seen more oil, by volume than I had previously in my entire first 11 weeks here in Louisiana. On August 6th, I flew over Terrebonne and Barataria Bays with Southwings Aviation and the Lower Mississippi Riverkeepers. What I saw was horrifying. Oil blanketed every single beach and Gulf side marsh from Raccoon Island east to the Mississippi Delta. There was evidence of clean up on 5 beaches, but from the air it looked like the efforts were all but superficial, except on Grand Isle beach which looked pretty clean. However, on the eastern tip of the island we could see mats of weathered oil that extend for hundreds of meters along the coast, and have just begun to be dealt with by BP contractors. Nearly all of the marshes that we passed had a wide rim of orange and brown dead marsh grasses lining them. Also what was evident were dark blotches of probable submerged masses of thick oil in the nearshore areas. I learned last night that when the oil mixes with the sand, they call it asphalting, and this is what's happening nearly everywhere, as the sticky nature of the Louisiana crude bonds easily with anything that it touches, like feathers for example.

(snip)

I am so glad that I don't own a TV and have to listen to the propaganda being fed by BP on nearly every channel, and the main stream media and government reports that actually back up the claims that they are cleaning this oil up. In two hours of flying over the affected beaches, although we saw evidence of clean up crews, we saw not a single person working. Not one. Everyday more migratory birds arrive on these shores, and little to nothing is being done to safeguard them from a highly toxic environment. I flew over 60 plus miles of coastline and nearly every marsh was oiled like this. Marshes present a particular problem, in that they don't know how to clean them, but cleaning the beaches should only be limited to man power and resources which should be limited at about 97 billion dollars, so there is absolutely no reason why these beaches shouldn't be spotless. A large accumulation of oil on Elmer's Island which has been there for more than 11 weeks. It appears that they have just begun to clean the northwest corner of the deposit.

This oil on Elmer's Island has been there since the very first days that the oil hit, somewhere around May 20th. From the air it is very apparent that they have just begun to scrape some oil out of the Northwest corner of the deposit. This oil has been there for literally two and a half months without effort to pick it up. When it first hit shore it was the perfect type of conglomeration to be vacuumed up in a pump truck like the type used in Caminada Pass. In fact these trucks could have and should have been deployed on day one, but it wasn't until may 28th that any type of clean up began anywhere, and then it was just a poorly organized show dressed in red, white and blue uniforms sent to perform for the President.



One thing that this flight revealed was that the oil, like seaweed and other debris tends to accumulate on points and eddies and geographic changes in the shoreline. It then becomes apparent that much of the clean up effort should be focused in these areas, instead of ambling up and down beaches scooping up tarballs, there is real, heavy, thick oil in these locations. Many hundreds of barrels of oil are represented in the above picture, which is contrasted now by the aerial photograph taken on May 22 by Richard Shephard of the exact same location. Many more images of this oil can be seen on his website rsairphoto.com
Heavy oil on Elmer's Island in the very first days of oil hitting the shores of Louisiana. It remains to be cleaned up 80 days later.

(snip)

[dipsydoodle]

1. Why don't they set fire to it ?

The UK's RAF used napalm on the Torrey Canyon slicks.

[ensho]

2. makes me feel sick seeing the pic & reading the report and Obama

swims in a fairly clean place to help the tourist trade in Fl.

the oil Barons standing on his neck smirk.

we have to help get the Barons off his neck so he can breathe.

[nashville_brook]

4. that's my sense of it too.

"come on in the water's fine" -- not what the people need to hear right now. it's what the Chamber of Commerce wants to hear, for sure. but, we need to know the truth. we need more than sniff-testing. we need real oversight, and...we're not going to get it unless we do it ourselves. everyone has been bought off.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

3. Kick

This tragedy is still unfolding and is nowhere near showing the worst effects yet.

[nashville_brook]

5. it's moving on "biologic" time -- not as slow as "geologic" time.

but slow enough for the Chamber of Commerce to put everyone asleep long enough to let the toxins sink deep down into our soft tissue.

(i'm feeling kinda dark today :evilgrin:)

[nashville_brook]

6. kickee

[Forkboy]

7. K&R

[Spheric]

8. K&R /nt

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Shh. Don't talk about this.

Look at that SHINY thing over there >>>



:banghead:

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. ...

:grr:

[Hell Hath No Fury]

10. BUT IT'S ALL GONE!!

Didn't you get the memo???? :puke:

And many here mocked those who refused to believe the bullshit being peddled. :(