Oil seepage reported on Bolivar Peninsula
Coast Guard officials are responding to an oil seepage reported on the Bolivar Peninsula.
The Galveston Beach Patrol first reported seeing oil along a 100-yard stretch of beach around midday Friday, officials said.
Right now, responders are working to determine whether the seepage is natural or from old pipelines in the area. About 30 gallons of oil have been collected, officials said.
Officials from the Texas General Land Office, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Galveston County Office and the Texas Railroad Commission are involved with removing the oil and cleaning the area. Trenches were dug and sorbent booms are being used in the process.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/article/Oil-seepage-reported-on-Bolivar-Peninsula-6339529.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
I took color pictures of natural oil seeping up from the river by the bank about half a century ago. The photograph showed the blue brown sheen of the oil on the water.
It looked like this, and neighbors visited each other with rafts:
Without the snow, though, but that is pretty much what it looked like then. Those piers were used to get around on the water.
It was riddled with palmettoes and the water smelled like sulfur from the oil underneath. This oil at Bolivar may also come from the Intracoastal Waterway that runs thorugh Bolivar. See the tugs and barges going thorugh there:
I nearly bought a plot of land on the east side of it on Bolivar. So there are several possibilities. Of course since the Shrub turned over things to private industry to inspect, and the agencies that Texans have counted on have been gutted by successive waves of GOP troglodytes, anything is likely to happen down there.
It's a Libertarian nightmare but this spill or whatever it is seems to be being dealt with now.
