The BP Oil Spill’s Long-Term Threat to Bluefin Tuna
December 25, 2010 by admin
Filed under Protecting Habitats, Toxic Spills
When BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill spewed millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most pressing questions was how the environmental disaster would affect the area’s other major industry: fishing, and in particular, the highly prized bluefin tuna.
In the short term, Gulf fishing was crippled, as thousands of square miles were immediately closed. But even after some of these areas reopened, scientists and fishermen alike worried about the long-term effect of contamination on the area’s bountiful aquatic life. Recently, evidence has emerged to suggest that the oil spill may have an impact far beyond the Gulf, threatening one of the world’s most lucrative fishing species.
The controversy surrounds dispersants, the chemical compounds that BP (BP) used to break up the spilled oil. Basically a form of detergent, dispersants make it possible for oil to interact with water, transforming huge oil slicks into microscopic droplets that could seemingly disappear into the Gulf. In theory, at least, this would make it easier for bacteria and weather to further break down the oil, allowing it to dissolve into the environment.
Ignoring a Key Issue?
When BP began using dispersants, many environmentalists fretted that the compounds might harm the area’s fragile ecosystem. In response, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a two-pronged study to measure the toxicity of various dispersants. Their ultimate conclusion was that the eight dispersants tested — including Corexit 9500A, the main compound used in the Gulf — were generally less toxic than crude oil. What’s more, the EPA detected little or no increase in toxicity when dispersants were combined with oil. That is, the action of breaking down an oil slick generally did not add more toxins to the Gulf.
According to Peter Hodson, an aquatic toxicologist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, the EPA study ignored a key issue. While dispersants don’t increase the toxicity of petroleum, they can vastly increase the chances that a fish will interact with oil, and that the oil’s toxicity will affect sea life.
“After all,” Hodson points out, “Oil toxicity isn’t an issue until fish are exposed to it. Unfortunately, as minuscule dispersed oil droplets combine with water, the volume of the oil spill vastly expands. This can increase the risk to fish by 100- to 1,000-fold.”
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
One of the big problems, Hodson notes, is a matter of perspective. While oil dispersants make a spill disappear from the water’s surface, they don’t actually make it go away. For people, who naturally view a spill from above the surface of the water, it’s easy to see the effect of oil on birds, people and beaches, but harder to see the effect on fishes and other underwater organisms. That effect that may be increased as dispersants cause oil to combine with the water instead of float on the surface.
Hodson emphasizes that “This can lead to a blind approach when assessing risk, a process that is already difficult in an oil spill. If you are convinced that dispersants are not an issue because they aren’t more toxic than oil, then a lot less attention will be paid to what’s under the water, and we’re a lot more likely to endanger aquatic resources.”
This is particularly problematic for the Gulf’s sea life, especially eggs and embryos, which, Hodson says, “can’t move out of the way of oil.” Consequently, they’re likely to absorb dispersed oil and the chemicals that it releases. To make things worse, Hodson continues, “embryos and baby fish have thin skins, which makes them more susceptible to chemical contamination. This can lead to ‘teratogenic effects,’ or deformities.”
Bluefin Tuna in the Crosshairs
For the most part, attention has focused on the oysters and shrimp for which the Gulf is known. However, its waters are also home to a wide variety of sea life, including northern bluefin tuna, one of the most expensive fish species in the world. The tuna, which conservationists claim is on track to become an endangered species, spawns in only two areas: the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
While many fish may die because of the contamination, an even bigger problem may be the long-term impact on bluefin breeding. Hodson notes that “petroleum contamination could cause embryos to develop deformities, which can make it impossible for the young fish to grow old enough to reproduce.” This, in turn, could leave a major hole in breeding populations over the next few years.
To make things worse, bluefin tuna is already experiencing major problems. Exceedingly popular for sushi, the price of bluefin has skyrocketed over the past few years: In January 2010, a 510-pound bluefin tuna sold in Tokyo’s fish market for $175,000. With prices like that, fishermen are eager to reel in the fish.
Hammered at Both Ends
Fearing the bluefin’s extinction, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna set a 2010 quota of 13,500 tons, a 38% drop from 2009. In some regard, however, the ICCAT’s quota is largely irrelevant: Because of poaching and overfishing, the actual annual tuna yield is likely closer to 60,000 tons.
With so much money on the line, the pressure is tremendous to keep the bluefin tuna industry chugging along. Last month, fishing advocates successfully tabled a European Union plan to radically cut quotas aimed at allowing bluefin stocks to recover. Meanwhile, U.N. attempts to scale back or limit the industry have been blocked by several countries, notably Japan, which has lobbied aggressively to keep fishing quotas high.
Unfortunately, it will likely be years before scientists can fully measure the impact of the BP spill on the fish. During the initial cleanup efforts, it was impossible to directly observe the effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil on bluefin tuna embryos, though Hodson emphasizes that the long-term effect will be a decline in breeding stocks.
However, he warns, with overfishing threatening older bluefin tuna and oil contamination threatening embryos, humans are “hammering the bluefin population at both ends,” a process that is likely to lead to a devastating conclusion.
Tagged: bluefin tuna, bluefin-tuna-sushi, Deepwater Horizon, deepwater horizon oil spill, deepwater horizon spill, endangered, endangered animals, endangered species, endangered-species, EndangeredAnimals, extinct species
Article source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/BP-oil-spill-threat-bluefin-tuna/19740675/
Two Years After Billion-Gallon Toxic Ash Spill, EPA Still Dawdles
December 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
Today marks the second anniversary of the nations largest toxic waste spill, when a billion-gallon wave of arsenic-filled coal ash carried away three houses and destroyed a riverfront community below the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant in rural Tennessee.
Two years and $400 million dollars later, critical problems remain. Despite removal of more than 3 million tons of spilled ash, the cleanup at Kingston is far from complete, and the direction of EPAs rulemaking, intended to prevent another spill, is as murky as the contaminated cove beneath the broken dam.
The disaster cast a spotlight on EPAs 30-year failure to regulate the disposal of coal ash, a toxic-laden waste left over after burning coal for electricity. In the absence of federal protection standards, an enormous quantity of this waste has been dumped in unlined pits and ponds throughout the U.S. At least 50 high-hazard dams hold back millions of tons of toxic ash and threaten communities, like Harriman, that face destruction should these aging, unregulated dams break. And if another one of these dams collapses, human life is expected to be lost.
Beyond these catastrophic disasters, there are more than 100 locations across the country where water and air are poisoned by coal ash.. Arsenic levels in drinking water around unlined ash ponds can be high enough to cause cancer in 1 of 50 people which is 2,000 times EPAs acceptable risk. Additionally, these sites often are not covered, allowing ash to enter into the lungs of vulnerable populations like children and the elderly.
Immediately following the TVA disaster, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson recognized the danger to our nations health and environment posed by unregulated coal ash, and she pledged to close that gap. But along the winding path to effective controls, the administration lost its way.
The regulatory proposal that appeared 18 months after the disaster offered no clear direction. Yet, at eight public hearings this fall, thousands of citizens voiced their clear and unequivocal support for strong, federally enforceable regulations. Last month, EPA received approximately 450,000 public commentsthe great majority demanding that coal ash be regulated in a manner that protects public health.
Two years is more than enough time to adopt common sense regulations that protect our health and water from toxic chemicals such as arsenic, lead and mercury in coal ash. Today, we point again to the ruined community of Harriman and say never again.
High on our Christmas wish list is that the EPA in 2011 will finish the job of reversing the decades of neglect and finalize a rule that protects the nation from cataclysmic coal ash disasters, the poisoning of our drinking water, the fouling of our air, and the destruction of aquatic environments. We hope the EPAs New Years resolution is the same.
Article source: http://earthjustice.org/blog/2010-december/two-years-after-billion-gallon-toxic-ash-spill-epa-still-dawdles
Oil Spill Clean-up Gear Recycled As Electric Car Parts
December 20, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
In 2011, oil-soaked plastic boom material used to soak up oil in the Gulf of Mexico will find new life as auto parts in the Chevrolet Volt.
During the Gulf oil spill crisis, volunteers and clean-up crews deployed hundreds of miles of plastic booms in an effort to contain and remove toxic oil from the water’s surface.
Few people stopped to think about what would happen to the water-logged booms once they were no longer needed, but the folks at General Motors saw an opportunity to get creative.
GM has developed a cooperative method that will not only keep an estimated 100 miles of the oily material out of the nation’s landfills, it will also create enough plastic under-hood parts to supply the first year production of the Chevy Volt, an extended-range electric vehicle.
How it works: First, Heritage Environmental collects boom material along the Louisiana coast. Mobile Fluid Recovery steps in next, using a massive high-speed drum that spins the booms until dry and eliminates all the absorbed oil and wastewater. Lucent Polymers then uses its process to manipulate the material into the physical state necessary for plastic die-mold production. GDC Inc., used its patented EndurapreneTM material process to then combine the resin with other plastic compounds to produce the components.
Recycling the booms will result in the production of more than 100,000 pounds of plastic resin for the vehicle components, eliminating an equal amount of waste that would otherwise have been incinerated or sent to landfills.
The parts, which deflect air around the vehicles radiator, are comprised of 25 percent boom material and 25 percent recycled tires from GMs Milford Proving Ground vehicle test facility. The remaining is a mixture of post-consumer recycled plastics and other polymers.
This effort is just another example of GM’s new resolve to be more transparent and environmentally-friendly in 2010 and beyond.
“This was purely a matter of helping out,” said John Bradburn, manager of GMs waste-reduction efforts. “If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didnt want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.”
The work in the Gulf is expected to last at least two more months and GM will continue to assist suppliers in collecting booms until the need no longer exists. The automaker anticipates enough material will be gathered that it can be used as components in other Chevrolet models.
Read more:
recycling, landfill, bp, offshore drilling, environment wildlife, oil spill, sustaintmc, Gulf of Mexico, electric car, chevy volt, oil boom
Article source: http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/oil-spill-clean-up-gear-recycled-into-car-parts/
Government Malfeasance and Nonfeasance on Wall Street
December 16, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
Image via Wikipedia
On December 15, 2010,the United States Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit under the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act against nine defendants (notably: BP, Anadarko, Triton, and Transocean) involved in what has become known as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The case represents a foray by the Justice Department into civil litigation rather than a criminal prosecution no, its not an incredibly rare step but its still noteworthy. After all, its not like we have crime under control in this country particularly corporate crime; but, hey, who am I to question priorities or suggest that the Justice Department might be better advised to focus on criminal cases.
At the heart of the Justice Departments case is a desire to find most of the Defendants as having unlimited liability for the costs of removing the spilled oil and the attendant damages.When you’re a Plaintiff in a civil action, convincing a court that your adversaries should have unlimited liability is a good thing. It often puts a goofy grin on Plaintiffs lawyers and I’m sure that the attorneys at the Justice Department will have a similarly broad smile if they prevail.
The Four Failures
The Justice Departments Complaint basically argues that important safety and operating regulations were violated in the period leading up to the April 20, 2010 Gulf oil spill. We’ve all seen the video of that I’m sure I don’t need to go into the gory details here.In making its case, the Justice Department cites the following shortcomings by the Defendants:
- Failing to take necessary precautions to keep the Macondo Well under control in the period leading up to the April 20th explosion;
- Failing to use the best available and safest drilling technology to monitor the wells conditions;
- Failing to maintain continuous surveillance; and
- Failing to use and maintain equipment and material that were available and necessary to ensure the safety and protection of personnel, equipment, natural resources, and the environment.
So . . . lemme see if I got all of this.
We had a bunch of folks poking holes in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. They were hoping to strike oil, suck the stuff up, process it, and ship it to market and make big bucks along the way. Everyone involved in this process knew the likely and I stress, likely risks. Consequently, when the slimy, goopy, black stuff came burbling up and spread all over the place, few folks were actually shocked. The reaction was more in the vein of We were afraid of that or We told you so.I mean, cmon now,they didnt put those rigs up under the cover of night and then camouflage them so that no one knew they were there.
Why do I raise that point? Well, since the drilling and all that went with it was open and notorious, youd sort of expect that the state and federal government agencies charged with monitoring the activity and drawing up contingency plans would have done their jobs or perhaps should have done their jobs, might be more accurate.
Adding the Accelerant
Which leads me to ask: How come the Justice Department isn’t also suing state and federal agencies and their officers for malfeasance and nonfeasance?
I see the names of some nine companies under Defendants in the Justice Departments lawsuit. Why dont I see the names of any government agency, administration, or bureau in the caption to the Complaint? Why dont I see the names of any human being who was an officer at any government agency, administration, or bureau in the caption to the Complaint?
The way I see it, there were two contributing factors to the horrendous tragedy that was the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.
First, you have those private-sector idiots who caused the leak through their likely negligence.
Second, you have those idiots in government who failed to do their jobs in terms of swift containment and clean-up.
Its as if you had an arson in which one person lit the fire and a second person came along and poured fuel on the fire.Remember, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulfin 2005 some five years before the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Like, what, Katrina wasnt the mother of all wake-up calls to those in government charged with handlingemergencies and disasters in the Gulf of Mexico?
Two To Tango on Wall Street
All of which prompts me to recall the Lehman Brothers failure, the Bear Stearns collapse, the Madoff and Stanford frauds,the Auction Rate Securities cases, the collateralized obligations frauds, and all the other exotic instruments that were dug up from the bowels of Wall Street, processed by the major financial services companies, dumped on an unsuspecting public, and supposedly monitored by a clueless regime of securities regulators.
And again, I ask: In all the federal civil and criminal cases against those who caused the toxic spill of financial products that nearly destroyed our nation, why haven’t any regulators and regulatory organizations also been named?
I’m going to try and control myself here. It would be easy for me to launch into a rant. It would simply be one of many diatribes that Ive written about failed regulation and inept regulators. Nonetheless, at least permit me to rephrase the Justice Departments hit list of failures in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I offer you that list in terms that might be suitable for those who brought us the Great Recession:
- Failing to take necessary precautions to keep the financial crisis of 2007 under control in the period leading up to the beginning of the Great Recession;
- Failing to use the best available and safesttechnology to monitor the equity and credit markets;
- Failing to maintain continuous surveillance; and
- Failing to use and maintain human resources and technology that were available and necessary to ensure the safety and protection of the financial markets and investors.
Sort of puts things in a different light, right? Makes you wonder. When do we put all the feet private sector and government to the fire?
Article source: http://blogs.forbes.com/billsinger/2010/12/16/government-oil-spill/?boxes=HomepageFAN
Hungarian Toxic Sludge Reaches Danube River
October 25, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
Hungary’s toxic sludge spill, which has killed four people, reached the Danube river, threatening to contaminate the waterway’s entire ecosystem, officials have said.
The sludge reached the Danube’s Mosoni Branch, about six miles from the main branch of the river this morning, according to Tibor Dobson, head of the disaster relief services.
The industrial accident triggered by the collapse of walls at the factory reservoir on Monday has been described as an ecological disaster and is now threatening the entire ecosystem of the Danube, Europe’s second longest river which runs from Hungary through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine before flowing into the Black Sea. 
Hungarian villagers whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed by the wave that poured out of an aluminium plant reservoir earlier this week have demanded compensation from the company blamed for the disaster.
Authorities have ordered a criminal inquiry into the accident, which killed at least four people, injured 120 and left three people missing.
After bursting from the reservoir and flooding three villages on Monday, the sludge - a waste product of aluminium production that can contain heavy metals - ended up in the Marcal River, part of the tributary system feeding the Danube, some 45 miles to the north.
It is feared it could contaminate the Danube, one of Europe’s biggest rivers.
Angry villagers gathered outside the mayor’s office in Kolontar, as they berated a senior official of MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company that owns the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant, demanding compensation.
Local officials said 34 homes in the village were uninhabitable. However, furious residents said the disaster had destroyed the whole community by making their real estate valueless.
“The whole settlement should be bulldozed into the ground,” bellowed Janos Potza, straining to be heard above his neighbours. “There’s no point for anyone to go back home.”
“Those who can, will move out of Kolontar. From now on, this is a dead town,” fumed Beata Gasko Monek.
Visibly shaken, Jozsef Deak, the company’s operations manager, said it would not shy away from taking responsibility if found guilty. He spoke from the passenger seat of a police cruiser, using its speaker system as villagers crowded around.
Two days after the red torrent disgorged an estimated 35 million cubic feet of toxic waste, it was not known why part of the reservoir collapsed.
National Police Chief Jozsef Hatala was heading the investigation into the spill because of its importance and complexity, police spokeswoman Monika Benyi said. Investigators would look into whether on-the-job carelessness was a factor, she said.
The huge reservoir, more than 1,000 feet long and 1,500 feet wide, was no longer leaking and a triple-tiered protective wall was being built around its damaged section.
(source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/8047873/Hungarian-toxic-sludge-reaches-Danube-river.html)Oil dispersants an environmental ‘crapshoot’
May 24, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
msnbc.com
updated 5/24/2010 5:49:57 PM ET
The timing could not be worse for the bluefin tuna. The majestic, deepwater giant — threatened by overfishing — had just lost a bid for protection as an endangered species when oil started gushing into its spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a part of the emergency response to the oil — the large-scale use of dispersants — could further imperil the species by sinking the oil beneath the Gulf’s surface and into the zone where its eggs and larvae are floating, marine biologists say.
The chemical dispersants — a standard tool in the oil cleanup business — are being used by the Deepwater Horizon response team to break up the oil offshore in hopes of preventing thick crude from wrecking delicate marshlands, mangroves and pristine beaches.
The federal government — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies — has signed off on BP’s use dispersants as a necessary part of the company’s damage-control strategy in the wake of the April 20 accident aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
But the chemicals, which are being used in unprecedented volumes and in previously untested ways, may come with a big tradeoff, scientists say. That’s because no one can accurately predict how large the impact will be on the mammals, fish and turtles that inhabit the open ocean.
“It’s a whole new ball game,” said Ted Van Vleet, a professor of chemical oceanography in the college of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. “People are totally unsure as to how it is going to affect the ecosystems.”
Dispersants themselves are toxic. But a bigger concern in the scientific community is what happens in dispersing the oil, which is far more hazardous to living creatures.
Typically, dispersant is sprayed on the surface of the water, where the oil naturally comes to rest, and works a bit like a dishwashing detergent on grease. It breaks down the slick into millions of tiny oil droplets that then become suspended below the surface, normally in the top 30 to 50 feet of the ocean. There, over the course of weeks and months, oil-eating bacteria, sunlight and wave action help break the oil downinto its chemical components, which are then diluted throughout the water.
But in the interim, the oil droplets drift in the upper layer of water, where many sea creatures live and reproduce.
“The fact that (dispersants) remove oil from the surface doesn’t mean it’s not toxic,” said Van Vleet. “It moves oil down into the water column, where other marine animals are exposed to it. … It trades one ecosystem for another.”
Unprecedented, untested
In the Deepwater Horizon accident, the response team has used more than 670,000 gallons of chemical dispersants as of Friday — far surpassing any previous use in the United States. Most of it has been sprayed from airplanes, but the Deepwater Horizon response team also has applied at least 55,000 gallons in a completely untested way — injecting it at the well’s leaking riser, some 5,000 feet below the surface.
Tag-a-Giant Foundation
While the dispersant may result in fewer oily egrets in the marsh, the bluefin is one of the creatures that may suffer greatly instead. The oil spill area overlaps with only known spawning area for one of two remaining bluefin populations. This bluefin population spends about 10 months of the year in the cold waters of the north Atlantic and then swims thousands of miles to reach an area near the Deepwater Horizon well to disseminate sperm and eggs in the warm Gulf waters between April and June. The larvae float about 10 to 15 feet below the surface in early stages of growth. No one is certain whether the oil will destroy the eggs or kill the larvae, but scientists fear that could happen.
“It is a critical habitat … and this is the most delicate life stage,” said Barbara Block, a professor at Stanford University studies bluefin tagged with sophisticated tracking devices. “The biodiversity of bluefin is at stake right now. … If we lose the year (of new bluefin) it will have a very large impact on a population of bluefin that is on the edge of extinction.”
This is the spawning ground for many other species, including marlin, swordfish and yellowfin tuna, which arrive in the summer.
Some of the chemical components distributed throughout the water will remain toxic for decades, and it’s not clear what the impact could be on future generations of bluefin or other creatures — sperm whales, Bryde’s whales, offshore dolphin populations and seabirds — that fish far from shore.
Monitoring the impact of oil and dispersant chemicals on open-sea fish and other creatures is difficult, experts say, because unlike shorebirds and oysters, they are hard to count.
“It’s hard to see them,” said Lee Crockett, director of U.S. Fisheries policy at the non-profit Pew Charitable Funds environmental group. “If they die, they are on the bottom of the ocean a mile down … For bluefin and marlins, it could be several years before you see what the impact was.”
Deep sea mystery and dead zones
One of the biggest unknowns is how the dispersants might affect the environment near the well head, a mile beneath the surface. BP and the EPA have said that initial monitoring of dispersants suggests the chemicals are helping to break up the crude.
But scientists say the monitoring plan has not been made available for outside review — raising a general complaint about a lack of transparency from the oil company and the government.
And some note that little is known about the deepwater ecosystem — or how the oil and dispersants will react under extremely high water pressure, very low temperatures, limited oxygen and virtually no light. Just getting good samples at this depth is a major challenge.
“There are a bunch of things in the deep sea that we don’t know very much about,” said Ed Overton, professor in the Marine Sciences Department at Louisiana State University. “What happens if those resources are damaged? How does that affect the ecology of the Gulf? It’s a crapshoot … an educated crapshoot.”
The conditions at the bottom of the Gulf also could affect the bacteria that help break down the oil near the surface, as they are less active in cold temperatures than in the warm surface waters, and they may be less abundant in the deep.
“We know that the surface material has been degrading,” says Ralph J. Portier, professor of environmental studies at LSU. “But what about the microbial population at depth?”
Lee Celano / Reuters file
If the oil on the ocean floor is not degraded by bacteria, the danger is that it will remain toxic for much longer than it would near the surface — potentially lingering for years instead of weeks or months — during which time it could be carried to deep coral reefs that provide shelter and nurseries to many species of fish.
There is a debate about the extent to which the Deepwater Horizon oil has entered the Loop Current, a warm flow that moves water — and any contaminants in it — southeast out of the Gulf, through the Florida Straits and into the Atlantic Ocean — potentially threatening the Florida Keys and other sensitive coral reef areas.
The massive use of dispersants in addition to oil may also be further depleting the water of oxygen contributing to “dead zones.”
“All chemicals do this,” said Portier. “If we poured in 400,000 or 500,000 gallons of buttermilk, we’d have a problem with oxygen,” he said.
The other unknown
The dispersant itself, while not the main concern, also is under scrutiny.
BP has used hundreds of thousands of gallons of Corexit, which is produced by Nalco, a Naperville, Ill.-based company.
About a third of the product, which is EPA approved, is a soap-like surfactant that breaks up the oil, according to Van Vleet, the chemical oceanographer. The surfactant is not considered toxic, though some studies suggest it may corrode fish eggs, made up largely of lipids, much as it dissolves oil.
Another third is a petroleum-based “carrier” that facilitates spraying. This component is somewhat toxic to plants and animals — though far less so than crude oil.
The final third of the ingredients are not publicly disclosed because the information is considered proprietary.
Shifting with the tides
On May 15, after some initial testing, the EPA and the Coast Guard approved BP’s use of dispersants at the well head, saying they had collected preliminary data showing it was helping keep some of the oil from reaching the surface.
The same day, however, The New York Times reported that a group of scientists aboard the research vessel Pelican had identified massive plumes of subsea oil — some as big as 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. The article said that scientists on the ship speculated that heavy use of dispersants had contributed to creation of the plumes.
NOAA challenged the report the next day, saying the release of the Pelican team’s data was premature, that the interpretation was misleading and that there was no information connecting subsurface layers of oil with the subsea dispersants.
“NOAA continues to work closely with EPA and the federal response team to monitor the presence of oil and the use of surface and sub-surface dispersants,” said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenko. “As we have emphasized, dispersants are not a silver bullet. They are used to move us towards the lesser of two environmental outcomes.”
On Thursday, the EPA issued a statement saying it had ordered BP to begin using a “less toxic” alternative to Corexit within 24 hours, even though the latter product is on a list of EPA-approved dispersants. The directive came a month after the Deepwater accident and after some 600,000 gallons of Corexit dispersants had been applied.
BP continued to spray Corexit on Monday.
“If we can find an alternative that is less toxic and available, we will switch to that product,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer. “To date, we’ve struggled to find an alternative either that had less risk to the environment or that was readily available.”
In an afternoon conference call on Monday, the U.S. government said it had ordered BP to “significantly scale back” its use of chemical dispersants in the oil spill response.
“The federal government, led by the Coast Guard, is today instructing BP to take immediate steps to significantly scale back the overall use of dispersants,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters on a conference call.
“Because of its use in unprecedented volumes and because much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants, EPA wants to ensure BP is using the least toxic product authorized for use,” the agency said. “We reserve the right to discontinue the use of this dispersant method if any negative impacts on the environment outweigh the benefits.”
This is just one area in which the Deepwater Horizon oil mess has taken responders into uncharted territory.
“The science hasn’t caught up with the situation,” said Overton, the marine scientist from LSU and a member of the scientific support team for NOAA.
© 2010 msnbc.com source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37282611/ns/gulf_oil_spill/
The Oil Spill’s Effects on Deep-Sea Ecology
May 24, 2010 by admin
Filed under Toxic Spills
The Great Unknowns in Gulf Oil Spill
by Ian Yarett May 24, 2010The deep water of the ocean is the largest habitat on earth but it’s also the least understood, making the effects of this deep-sea spill without precedent.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico falls into a distinct category from any other oil catastrophe; it’s the first blowout in history to release oil in such deep waters, nearly a mile below the surface.
As a result, scientists say, the impacts of this spill are likely to go far beyond the oiled birds and dead sea turtles, spoiled beaches and wetlands that we think of when we think “oil spill.” A substantial piece of the total impact is likely occurring under the sea, invisible (for now at least) but no less ominous than the more traditional shoreline effects. Far below the sea, the spill threatens organisms of all kinds and, indirectly, the ecosystem at large, though the extent of the danger is still obscured.
Oil on the surface of the ocean is a known quantity, says Ed Overton, an oil-spill expert at the Louisiana State University who is analyzing water, sediment, and other samples for NOAA’s scientific-support team. “It’s going to cause very substantial and noticeable damage—but it won’t take very long to find the marsh loss and coastal erosion and impact on fisheries,” he says. The effects of oil in the water column and at the sea floor, on the other hand, remains a mystery.
The first scientific mission to assess deepwater impacts of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, conducted from the research ship Pelican and funded by NOAA, discovered massive plumes of dispersed oilup to 30 miles long by seven miles wide and hundreds of feet thick. Though the data collected by the Pelican was criticized by NOAA as being too preliminary to draw conclusions from, scientists say the finding is not surprising and is in line with the results of previous studies.
One such study, a 2003 report by the National Research Council, considered what the effects of a deepwater well blowout might be and predicted that such an event, particularly of a reservoir rich in gas (as the Deepwater Horizon reservoir appears to be) would generate diffuse underwater plumes of microaerosolized oil much like what the Pelican scientists found.
A few years earlier, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) organized a study in 2000 in which scientists released oil into deep seas off the coast of Norway, but could only account for a small amount of it on the surface—suggesting that much of it remained in the water column. (While the conditions of this study aren’t identical to the conditions of the current spill, Overton says the general findings could be expected to apply).
Conventional wisdom suggests that oil is lighter than water and therefore floats, but that’s not entirely the case when a complex mixture of crude oil and natural gas is gushing from a well a mile below the surface, at high temperature and pressure, as is happening right now in the gulf. In this case, the gas can effervesce out of the oil, aerosolizing it into tiny droplets, much the way a fine mist emerges from the top of an aerosol can. Some of these droplets may be neutrally buoyant, meaning they move to a point in the water column where they neither rise nor sink, possibly resulting in underwater “plumes” like the ones reported. Adding subsea dispersants, which similarly break up the oil and are intended to prevent it from reaching the surface, may exacerbate this and could have toxic effects themselves.
A major impact of subsea oil plumes is that they lead to a bloom in oil-chomping microbes. These bugs eat the oil, but use oxygen in the process—meaning that oxygen levels in the water can drop rapidly and threaten the organisms living there. Samantha Joye, one of the principal investigators for the Pelican mission, says her team found that water within the plumes was 30 percent less oxygenated than normal. That’s not enough of a drop to suffocate organisms—but she worries that it could get there relatively soon.
There is plentiful life in the deep sea that’s in danger: fish, deep-sea corals, gelatinous zooplankton like jellyfish, and benthic-dwelling sharks, not to mention the diverse communites of shrimp, crabs, worms, and other critters that live near natural methane seeps. “It’s like a lush jungle down there,” Joye says. Even if oil exposure doesn’t kill these organisms, it could have chronic, long-term effects, like impaired growth or reproduction.
Over time, any impact on the deep-sea communities is likely to have more broad effects, since the whole ocean is connected by various biological processes. “All the different zones of life are interactive in one way or another,” says Lisa Levin, a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
And any oil in the deep-sea environment could persist for a long time. The majority of oil on the surface evaporates, washes up on shore, or is degraded by natural weathering and oil-eating microbes. In the deep sea, on the other hand, it’s dark and still, meaning no weathering and no evaporation. Microbial degradation is pretty much the only mitigating process—but it’s slow. As a result, there’s some possibility that deep-sea oil could get churned up by storms and have a limited shoreline impact sometime in the future, Joye says.
It could take years to find out the extent of the oil’s subsea impact, but the scientists interviewed for this article stressed the importance of beginning the search immediately, even before the gushing well is capped. “If you don’t look you won’t find,” says Rick Steiner, a marine biologist who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill back in 1989. “Hats off to the Pelican for doing what they could out there, but they might have sampled 1 percent or less of the total volume of the impact.” Many other questions about the plumes remain, Joye says, including what’s happening inside them, how are they moving, whether they’re growing or shrinking, and if there are more of them.
It’s also essential to get an accurate measure of the amount of oil being released, as this would allow scientists to deduce how much oil could be hiding below the surface based on the size of the oil slick and estimates of other factors like evaporation.
On these points, the scientific community has been increasingly critical of the official response to the spill, alleging that both the government and BP have resisted entreaties to either investigate the spill’s magnitude and subsea impacts themselves or to allow independent scientists to do so.
“These deepwater effects are not going to mess the beaches up, and they’re not going to have an immediate impact on the shrimp fishery, but they could have long-standing impacts,” Joye says. These hidden impacts—and the way they are handled—could one day be considered the Deepwater Horizon’s legacy.
source: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/24/the-great-unkowns-in-gulf-oil-spill.html