Louisiana Coast's Battle Against Drifting Oil Expected To Last Months, If Not Years - NOLA.com

I guess we're supposed to get used to being sad...

Louisiana coast's battle against drifting oil expected to last months, if not years
By Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune
May 23, 2010, 9:00AM

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For those saddened by the scenes of thick oil washing into Louisiana's coastal wetlands a month after the BP oil disaster began, experts on oil spills and the coastal ecosystem have some advice: Get used to it.

The crews mopping up oil on beaches and marsh shorelines this week are fighting just the first of what will probably be a series of rolling skirmishes that will last for months, if not years -- even after the runaway well is finally capped. In fact, the untold millions of gallons of oil already fouling the Gulf off the Louisiana coast could stay in the area for at least a decade, and on the sea floor for more than 100 years.

"I'm afraid we're just seeing the beginning of what is going to be a long, ugly summer," said Ed Overton, an LSU professor who has consulted on oil spills for three decades.



"I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I think what we're in for is seeing a little bit come in each day at different places for a long, long time -- months and months.

"That's not what I said in the beginning of this. But events have made me amend my thoughts."

When it began April 20, Louisiana and the world feared a quick and dramatic result, a black tsunami washing over one of the world's most productive and valuable coastal ecosystems. Expecting a disaster with iconic images to rival the environmental mugging of Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez, the planet's media rushed to the scene. Within days fishing towns like Venice and Hopedale became datelines in newspapers from Paris to Hong Kong, which painted pictures of a culture bracing for ecosystem Armageddon.

But for weeks, little happened on shore. Even as the amount of crude spewing from the 19-inch hole in the Gulf climbed, the wetlands and its critters remained healthy.

That began to change this week. Thick oil invaded the wetlands of the Mississippi River delta, then began spreading westward, rolling up on coastal beaches and barrier islands from Grand Isle to Marsh Island in Vermillion Bay.

But even this hasn't been an inundation. The oil has been in long, narrow lines. And there seems to be no discernible weather pattern associated with the arrivals. They have cropped up on calm days and rough, and days with little tide range.

That random pattern, experts now say, is probably the best guess of what the state should expect for many months ahead. And they stress the "guess" part, because the location of the runaway well and the environment into which it is flowing make it unprecedented in the history of oil disasters.

"We learn from experience, and the last experience we had with a big spill was the Exxon Valdez, so naturally people expected similar results," said LSU oceanography professor Robert Carney, who has done extensive research on the Gulf of Mexico.

"But everything about this is so radically different."

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More: http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/louisiana_coasts_battle_agains.html

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