BP well may be capped, but oil’s damage is far from over
NEW ORLEANS — BP may be on the verge of capping the well which has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but the cleanup is far from over and the damage to the region’s environment and economy could last decades. An estimated two to four million barrels of oil have poured into the sea since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank spectacularly on April 22, and if the higher end of that range is correct it is the largest accidental discharge in history. Some has been skimmed or burned off the surface. About 40 percent of the oil has likely evaporated and naturally occurring microbes will help to eventually break down a large chunk of the rest. But there is still a vast amount of oil floating at all levels of the water column and spreading out for hundreds of miles in thousands of surface slicks which have sullied hundreds of miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida. “Eventually a lot of that oil will settle to the bottom and in storms it’ll just keep washing up on beaches,” Paul Montagna, an ecologist with the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico studies, said in a telephone interview. “That’s going to go on for 10 years, maybe 20. That was our experience with the Ixtoc spill off Mexico in 1979.”.... MORESource: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100715com3.html |
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