Effects of Spill Spread as Tar Balls Are Found
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
NEW ORLEANS — All along the Gulf Coast for the past two months, the threat of oil hitting shore has kept communities on edge.
But the sight of oil on a Texas beach and at the passes leading into Lake Pontchartrain over the weekend has reinforced what many already suspected: nowhere along the coast may be left unstained by this huge spill.
While the tar balls discovered in Texas appear to have been an anomaly, the tar balls in Lake Pontchartrain, a brackish body of water that is technically an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico, are another sign of the oil’s steady encroachment into inland Louisiana waters. Houses, marinas, restaurants and businesses line the lake, as does much of New Orleans.
Local officials, including the mayor of New Orleans, had already taken measures like setting up barges to block the passes. Kevin Davis, the president of St. Tammany Parish, which lies along much of the north shore of the lake, has compared the wait for the oil to the “Jaws” music signaling a coming attack.
Strong easterly winds, which are expected to continue, most likely pushed the tar balls in from the Mississippi Sound, bypassing the barges, said Anne Rheams, the executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.
Once the small, heavily weathered tar balls came, crews went to work, gathering roughly 1,700 pounds of oily waste. But the fear has not dissipated.
“When you look at the trajectories and you look at the wind patterns, we know that more of it will be moving in,” Ms. Rheams said.
In Texas, the discovery of tar balls on beaches around Galveston was the first reports of oil on the state’s coast since the spill began. And with confirmation that the tar balls were from the BP spill, Texas joined every other Gulf Coast state in facing the spill’s impact.
But at a news conference on Tuesday, Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner, said the tar balls were only slightly weathered, suggesting that the oil had not drifted so far on its own.
It is possible that the oil had leaked from a ship involved in the cleanup, he said, as some of the oil-water mix collected during the response operation is being taken to a processing company near Galveston. The Coast Guard is still conducting tests.
For now, many people who live and work along the Texas coast say they are not in a panic, adding that tar balls wash up all the time. But that does not mean they think this will be the end of it.
“I figure they’ve got their head buried in the sand if they don’t think we’re going to get it over here,” said Carol Dickerson, who works at Blue Water Bait Camp in Crystal Beach, Tex. “There’s just too much oil, and I know that we’re going to get it eventually.”
The worries in New Orleans are more immediate.
Since the spill began, the city has been in a difficult situation. It has become the headquarters for the area command and is frequently the backdrop for news reports.
But the city has constantly had to give geography refreshers to hesitant tourists, reminding them that New Orleans has no beachfront and is a two-hour drive from the state’s southern coast, where most of the oil has washed up.
Those messages are now more complicated.
“The situation changes a little bit now that tar balls have hit the lake,” said Kelly Schulz, a vice president of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re working on that as we speak.”
The counterclockwise currents in Lake Pontchartrain suggest that if oil did enter in heavier concentrations, it would travel along the lake’s northern coast, which is heavily populated in some areas, before coming back around to New Orleans, Ms. Rheams said.
Most of the lake, which is becoming a last refuge for the area’s hurting fishermen, remains open to fishing.
But Greg Henry, who runs a charter boat company in New Orleans, said he was forced to put an end to his fishing trips in nearby Lake Borgne. He said he was going to have to stick to party cruises, at least as long as the water stayed clean.
“I just don’t want to start doing tours of oil,” Mr. Henry said. “That’s not something I want to show people.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/us/07s…
What is your opinion on this?
It's so bad that even coverup itself isn't going to make it look good. So sorry to our southern brothers and sisters that have to deal with the aftermath up close and personal.
What is your opinion on this?
Its Nice
yes
you really think the people of p%26amp;s are gonna read all that? i live in florida, so oil sucks
