"Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak"

[phantom power]

Here it comes. :(

Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana's wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

A deep, stagnant ooze sat in the middle of a particularly devastated marsh off the Louisiana coast where Emily Guidry Schatzel of the National Wildlife Federation was examining stained reeds.

"This is just heartbreaking," she said with a sigh. "I can't believe it."

...

"Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after touring the clogged marshes. "Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn't be here, either."

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/a_month_in_outrage_over_gulf_o.html

[aquart]

1. MURDERERS.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. ditto.

:cry:

[RKP5637]

3. You're doing a helluva good job BP!

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[NCarolinawoman]

4. I know. I think at times I have to get away from it for my sanity.

Not watch the news. Too overwhelming. Too horrific. It's haunting me.

I dreamed about it last night. :(

[Wednesdays]

9. Not watch the news?

You mean the talking heads on M$M who tell us everything's just gonna be peachy?

[stuntcat]

12. my news strategy for this disaster-

From the first I heard of it I stopped paying attention, I knew it would freak me out and I was hoping they'd find a way to stop it, or deal.. or something,
and now it's a month later, but it just gets worse and worse. Haunting is the word for what knowing about it does :(((

(good luck to the turtles and NC coast animals!)

[dgibby]

5. It's going to get a lot worse.

According to MSNBC, BP is estimating it will be Aug. before the "leak" can be stopped because the relief wells won't be finished before then. By then, the entire Gulf will be a dead zone.:nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[woodsprite]

6. Maybe that's what they want. Then they can drill where ever they please. n/t

[dgibby]

8. That thought did cross my mind,

although I hate to admit it. I don't recognize this country anymore.:cry:

[stuntcat]

11. that's what it would probably come to in a few more years anyway :[

Bad as humans are I did not imagine something this ugly happening so soon. I'm out of hope to give up and my heart can't break more. The only thing changing for me now is anger, I am filling up.. anger and sickness.

[JuniperLea]

7. Watching Bobby Jindal squirm would totally rule...

If it weren't for the fact that we're all screwed in this.

There is an irony factor here... Jindal and his asshat buddies begged for this.

[stuntcat]

10. and some people have already been working for decades on saving those species.

I've been dreading the next few decades but I didn't know something like this was coming so soon.
It is the sickest thing in the whole universe, what humans will do.

[izquierdista]

13. Actually, that's where the oil will get broken down quickest

Once the oil has killed the flora and fauna in the marsh, the microflora of bacteria and fungi will have a nutrient rich media to digest and replicate upon. Shallow coastal areas provide the right combination of temperature, water, and nutrients to have an explosion in life at the microscopic level. Burning it off isn't even necessary, consuming some of the oil mass to be decomposed being offset by slowing the rate of microflora growth until the high pH of the ash gets leached out by rains.

The right thing to do once the oil washes up is to create conditions which will favor the growth of organisms that can break down the oil. The technology is out there, but it has never been attempted on this scale before.