On Day 100 of the BP Disaster, U.S. Has Two New Spills to Deal With
Oil spews from a wellhead in Barataria Bay on the coast of Louisiana, on July 27, 2010, after the wellhead was struck by a tugboat. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)
It’s Day 100 of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf, and if you just read the New York Times and Washington Post headlines this morning, you might be feeling pretty hopeful that soon enough, you won’t have to think about oil spills for a while.
Not so fast. On Tuesday, another spill was detected in the Gulf—the result of a boat's colliding with an out-of-use wellhead in Barataria Bay. NBC reported that it was small in size, but near a marshy and ecologically sensitive area of Louisiana.
Officials said on Tuesday that the spill would likely be contained within the day, but when I called the Coast Guard this afternoon, I was told the well was still spewing oil and gas.
“Well control did arrive on the scene and are in the process of shutting that well right now,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Tom Atkeson told me. “I do not have an exact figure on the amount of gallons that have been spilled. It looks like most of it is natural gas.”
The protective measures that we’re now all-too-familiar with have also been put in place for this spill—safety zones around the site, and nearly 11,000 feet of boom.
Up in Michigan, The Detroit News reports that workers are still fighting what “could rank as the Midwest’s worst oil spill.” More than 800,000 gallons of oil spilled from a ruptured underground pipe and entered the Kalamazoo River. Residents had detected the smell of crude on Sunday evening, but no one knows how long the leak was happening, and there are still questions of whether the flow from the pipeline has been completely shut off.
Canada’s Enbridge pipeline company has pledged to clean up the spill, but told reporters it will take months.
Benzene—a carcinogenic constituent of crude oil also detected in the Gulf—has been detected in the air. The EPA said data haven't shown levels that are “immediately dangerous to human health and life,” but added, “That’s not to say we are confident that those levels are acceptable for long-term exposure.”
As many as 30 families have been relocated, and the cause is being investigated, according to the News.
Michigan’s governor, Jennifer Granholm, has called the response to the spill “anemic.” (And yes—there are photos, if you haven’t had your fill of oil-covered birds.)
This particular pipeline typically carries “about 8 million gallons of oil per day” from Indiana to Ontario, The Associated Press reported. With plans already in the works for another pipeline that would stretch from Canada to the Gulf, perhaps the EPA was wise—given our recent troubles—to slow down the approval process for this project just a tad.
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5 comments
Edward Vielmetti
July 28, 2010, 3:47 p.m.
I wrote this summary of Kalamazoo River oil spill news this morning for AnnArbor.com:
http://www.annarbor.com/vielmetti/michigan-oil-spill-links-pipeline-accident-fills-kalamazoo-river-with/
The early afternoon call I had with an Enbridge spokesperson in Calgary revealed that the Canadian headquarters did not have a map of the cleanup efforts available to share with me.
Dominick Mastroserio
July 28, 2010, 8:44 p.m.
The ugly twin enemies of hope - despair and presumption - have sunk to their most abysmal level for mankind.
Despair for the teeming billions has led to increasing incidence of suicide and psycholocial dysfunction.
Presumption of the bloated plaster gods who misrule has led to increasing incidence of widespread, organism-poisoning carelessness based on avaricious lies and a jaded hedonism that will soon extinguish all life on our planet as these plaster gods disinterestedly watch.
Hope was last seen dying in Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
Claudia Ryan
July 28, 2010, 11:29 p.m.
Thank you Dominick for your comments; and, many thanks to ProPublica for the TRUTH!!.
Spencer Barclay
July 29, 2010, 1:31 a.m.
The government as it exists must go. If a paperboy breaks your window, his bosses are accountable. If your elected representatives let the cia commit atrocities then they are committed on your behalf. We should all look at the Oil covered birds to remind, or better, teach us of the importance of keeping officials in check, and the dire need to extinguish the ability to and practice of purchasing favorable legislation. Hardly enough probing into the non-existing environmental regulations has been even talked about and probably wont. We need to realize the nature of our governors and do something about it.Im not a murderer, yet it seems im guilty by inaction.
Jefferson had the only wise view of government IMHO.
Gerry
July 29, 2010, 12:41 p.m.
Here is an e-mail that representatives from the Daily Kos Gulf Watchers liveblog have sent to Ed Markey. We feel that the recent absence of live feeds from BP’s undersea operations is another deliberative obfuscation and hope that Markey will bring his authority to bear on this immediately.
Dear Representative Markey,
We at Gulf Watchers have found that the ROV feeds from the ships around Macondo have become quite erratic—and some don’t load at all. In particular, the two Skandi feeds have failed to load for two days now: the Skandi ROVs which have consistently covered critical action. And which, most particularly, were covering the ever-increasing leaks between the HC Connector and the 3-Ram Capping Stack.
We are of the opinion that these ROVs are likely not offline (we get neither a green screen nor a test pattern: they simply fail to load), but rather being jammed on the public feeds.
If we cannot witness what BP is doing, we cannot keep independent watch over their undersea activities, and that is a very uncomfortable situation for us. Needless to say, we do not trust them, and depend on our experts to analyze what’s happening there, and bring and issues up for discussion.
We are asking you to bring all powers you bear on BP to get all feeds back up and available to the public in general, that we may continue to be citizen watchdogs in their undertaking.
Thank you very much,
[individual signatures inserted]
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers