Gulf spill can kill our tourist season by Carl Hiaasen

Source: The Miami Herald

Oops.

That's the official position of British Petroleum.

It turns out that oil is gushing from that blown-out rig off the Louisiana coast at a flow of at least 5,000 barrels a day, five times more than BP first estimated.

Oh, and if you're keeping count, by Friday there were three leaks -- not two -- in the mile-long pipe that connected the platform to the wellhead.

The slick is larger than Rhode Island, and a shift of wind is pushing it into the wetlands of bayou country, imperiling birds, marine life and commercial fishing. Tourist beaches in Alabama and northwest Florida are also at risk.

Barely a month ago, President Obama announced plans to expand offshore oil operations in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast as far south as central Florida.

Fabulous idea!

It won't bring down the price of gasoline one penny at the pump, and it won't yield enough crude oil to light up America for even a year -- but, hey, what harm could it do?

Oops.

<snip>

At a depth of 5,000 feet, either project will take weeks or months, during which time the oil would continue leaking.

Meanwhile, as this column is being written, BP is lighting parts of the Gulf of Mexico on fire, to burn off some of the slick. So much for high-tech.

The company is also assembling an extremely large dome -- I swear -- that engineers could lower to the ocean floor and place over the leak in an attempt to capture the oil.

Maybe when they're done, they can give it to Wile E. Coyote so he can use it to trap the roadrunner.

BP says everything possible is being done to stop the leak and contain the spill. That's probably true, which is sobering.

Despite all the assurances from Big Oil and the politicians who are in its pocket, the technology of undersea drilling is dangerously lagging when it comes to protecting the coastal communities whose economies depend on clean water, clean beaches and healthy fisheries.

<snip>

On Friday, with the spill blooming into a disaster, the White House announced that no new offshore drilling will be authorized until the Louisiana incident is fully investigated.

<snip>

Perfectly safe, they say. Ya'll just relax.

Two days after exploding, the Deepwater Horizon went down on April 22 about 50 miles from mainland Louisiana. It took only a week after that for the first streaks of oil to reach the shore.

Miles of protective booms have been laid along the marshes. Officials are considering cannon fire to scare away birds, so they don't land in the goo. Another idea is to recruit local shrimp boats as oil skimmers.

Because BP hasn't been able to cap the leak, the Obama administration is sending U.S. military assistance. In other words, the Louisiana spill is an official emergency.

If it had happened near Jacksonville or Daytona Beach, Naples, Sarasota, Key West . . .

Oops.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/01/1607537/gulf-spill-can-kill-our-tourist.html

(not that it helped. Who the heck unrecs Carl Hiaasen?)

Some people...

k&r

What a world.

...which is sobering."

The guy can really put together an effective message. :patriot:

Obama needs to re-review everything because there are more of these down the road.

:silly:

I am monitoring the slick closely as I am scheduled to go to the Appalachicola area in July - and if the slick should unfortunately drift the beautiful beaches over there, we will be canceling our trip. In deposits and planned costs with just my crew, that's a $10k hit for the week (we're renting a large house with several other families and their children).