Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible

[FarCenter]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100522/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_impossible_cleanup

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer – 23 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.

Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.

But they warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.

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Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound — used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.

Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances.

"Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.


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[aquart]

1. Let them die until they live again.

But post tall signs, visible from Mars: Murdered by British Petroleum. Murdered by Greed.

[Kablooie]

3. Living again may not happen within anyone's lifetime. We may have a huge toxic dump for a century.

[WeDidIt]

5. I don't think it'll be a century

Probably closer to 70 or 80 years.

[Kablooie]

6. Whew! That's better. I thought it would be a century.

[WeDidIt]

7. So a little child alive right now might be able to see the marshes starting to come back

just a few years before they die.

[aquart]

8. Really? I was thinking 500 years.

[Tesha]

9. They were also murdered by the people who voted to reverse our course on energy conservation.

That would be Republicans and the politicians they elected. Strangely
enough, that's many of the same people who live near these now-
murdered wetlands.

I'm sorry, but while BP and their business associates may be the
proximate cause of this disaster, the real "root causes" of this
disaster go far wider and deeper than just BP and company.

Tesha

[WeDidIt]

2. Those wetlands were dead the instant Deep Horizon exploded

and there was nothing anybody was going to be able to do to stop it.

BTW, consider the Everglades partially dead, ass well. The entire ecosystem won't be affected, but a majority will.

[Catherina]

10. Bullshit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnTPOx-XCBQ

[Tesha]

11. That's a convenient theory.

Not necessarily true, but convenient.

Had BP quickly "come clean" about the magnitude of the disaster,
different decisions might have been made in the first few hours.
But so far, BP is *STILL* denying how bad things really are and
as a result, poor decisions are probably still being made.

Tesha

[Owl]

4. Unfortunately it's hard to let nature "break down the spill" when the "spill" is non-stop.