Oiled Louisiana wetlands may have to be burned to be saved

[flamingdem]

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/39329

2010-05-21 09:54

EXCERPT:

VENICE, May 21 (AFP) - The thick globs of oil now coating delicate grasses along Louisiana's fragile coast threaten a slow and painful death for countless waterfowl, wildlife and their wetland habitat.

Cleaning up the maze of marshes, where there's nothing to stand on and shallow-bottomed boats are needed to navigated the narrow channels, is a logistical nightmare.

Unlike a beach or rocky shore, crews can't just drive up with a backhoe or a mop. And there are plenty of places for frightened wildlife to hide from rescue workers as the oil slowly smothers them.

Experts say the best options may be to simply leave the oil there or, if the clumps are too thick, burn it off.

"When you start moving all the grasses and marshes around you might actually cause more damage than letting it biodegrade on its own," LuAnn White, director of Tulane University's Center for Applied Environmental Health, told AFP.

"Exactly what will be done really depends on how much really gets in there and how much damage is being done and I don't think we know that yet."

Favorable winds and currents have kept the bulk of a massive oil slick from reaching the coast in the month since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon sank spectacularly some 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore and set off one of the worst ecological disasters in US history.

But with some 49 miles of shoreline now affected, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said more action must be taken to hold back the black tide.

[flamingdem]

1. It gets worse...

... only 20% can be cleaned up!? Less in this case.


Local leaders and environmentalists were beginning to despair.

"Twenty-four miles of Plaquemines Parish is destroyed. Everything in it is dead," Billy Nungesser, head of the parish in southern Louisiana, told US cable news station MSNBC. "There is no life in that marsh. You won't clean it up."

"We've been begging BP to step up to the plate," said Nungesser. The slick is "destroying our marsh, inch by inch," and will keep on coming ashore for weeks and months, he said.

Greenpeace campaigner Lindsay Allen was equally despondent as she collected samples from a bayou near Venice, Louisiana where thick brown oil coated the shells of crabs and the stems of grasses.

"There is no way to cleanup all this mess," she told AFP. "It's too big of a problem."

A typical recovery rate for oil spills is about 20 percent. Given how dispersed the oil is in the Gulf most experts expect the recovery rate on this spill to be far lower.