[caption id="attachment_1205" align="alignleft" width="396" caption="Aerial of Grand Isle, © BP p.l.c."]
[/caption]"Either the Coast Guard has to side with its American citizens and protect its communities, or it has to side with a major world corporation named BP and betray American citizens in that process," St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro told reporters.
Oil is has been coming ashore along Louisiana's barrier islands for a few days now. It doesn't seem like BP has found a workable solution for stopping the flow of oil from their well or even a solution for cleaning up the environment affected by the spill, however, Actor Kevin Costner might hold the answer to the oil spill.
Personally, I think calling this a spill is an understatement. An oil spill in the past has been a ship hits a reef and a specified amount of oil leaves the ship. Once the ship is empty, the oil stops flowing.
With the Gulf "Oil Spill" there is not a pre-determinied amount of oil that can flow out. It just keeps coming until a way to plug the hole is found. Right now, the only information available is BP's numbers: about 5,000 barrels of oil are seeping into the Gulf daily. This is approximately 210,000 gallons. This is not good. I think I have sufficiently proved my point.
With numbers so large as these, a viable solution must be found. Protecting the shorelines is definitely a necessity. I live in Florida right near the beach so I know how much the shorelines are loved. Nothing compares to a nice sunny day at the beach with the gulls squawking, the pelicans fishing and the dolphins jumping.
The underwater gusher in the middle of the Gulf has the potential to ruin that lovely beach experience for generations to come. Many solutions have been suggested and tried. As of this writing, none have worked.
This may be depressing in more ways than one, but the heartening part about it is that a solution will be found. No matter what, this will be corrected and the oil spill will be cleaned up. It might take a while, but you mustn't give up hope.
The next thing that BP will try later this week is to execute a "top kill" basically this means that a thick viscous fluid that has twice the density of water will be pumped into the site of the leak. Hopefully this will stop the flow of the oil so that the well can be sealed with cement.
If this doesn't work, they will try a "junk shot" where they would basically try to plug the well with rubber and other substances.
"We need to be putting all hands on deck there. And we don't want to perpetuate any kind of notion at all, whether it's BP or the United States government, that this is anything less than potentially catastrophic for this country," U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said.
"It's 5,000 feet under the surface. There is no human access there," he said. "Almost all of the work is being done with remotely operated vehicles. That is vastly different, makes this a much tougher technical problem."
"We had a grounded ship before, and we knew how much oil was there," he said. "Right now, until we seal that leak, this is an indeterminate amount of oil that is coming to the surface." Allen continued.
BP Managing Director Bob Dudley said, "Oh... absolutely. You see the films of the oil washing on some of the beaches in Louisiana. This is catastrophic for, well, every employee of BP. It is catastrophic for the 24,000 people down there working on the spills that we've let some get through these defenses."
[caption id="attachment_1206" align="alignright" width="446" caption="Beach Cleanup, © BP p.l.c."]
[/caption]All that is really known is that there is an oil spill in the Gulf and it needs to be fixed.
You can help with the clean up efforts, call, 1-866-448-5816 for volunteer information, or register Here to volunteer for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. Also, you can visit La Gulf Response for more information on how you can help.
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