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Friday, July 25, 2008 New Orleans, LA - Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper
and Atchafalaya Basinkeeper made a special air patrol today to check on
the area of the Mississippi River affected by the oil spilled from the
barge that was hit by a tanker on Wednesday. What was found was not
encouraging. Oil continues to leak from the wreckage of the barge and
there were extensive oil slicks on the river from the wreckage to the
extent of our patrol (near Carlisle).
A pilot we spoke to said that it
was like this all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It appears that oil
has been continuously leaking from the barge in substantial quantities
since the wreck occurred. Disturbingly, there appears to be little
effort to contain and collect the leaking oil. While many areas on the
river have been boomed off to prevent the oil from getting into things
like intakes, diversions and other waterways, there seems to be little real
attempt to collect the spilling oil. It appears that the oil is simply
being allowed to escape into the Gulf of Mexico.
These photos were taken on our patrol at around 12:00p.m. Friday, July 25, 2008:
Oil continues to leak from the barge as of noon friday
There was some clean up activity near the French Quarter/CBD area though this boom does not appear to be doing anything and it does not cover the width of the flow of oil from the barge. We saw no other booms being used to collect oil.
The sheen of oil covered much of the river
More oil slicks
Oil as far as the eye can see
What is leaking was reported as No. 6 fuel oil, also called residual
fuel oil (RFO) or heavy fuel oil, which is what remains of crude oil
after gasoline and the distillate fuel oils are extracted through
distillation. No. 6 fuel oil often contains high levels of sulfur
compounds and heavy metals. It is used for fuel in some boilers,
including marine boilers.
Over 1 million people live along the river
corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with many of those people
getting their drinking water from the river. This stretch of the river
also conducts a large volume of shipping of raw industrial materials,
many of which are hazardous in some way. Accidents with barges on the
river are an all too common occurrence and yet we are very lucky that
worse catastrophes have not occurred. We believe that there needs to be
a serious review of the safety practices used for the shipping of
dangerous cargo in Louisiana. Barges need to be labeled in such a way
that first responders can easily determine from a distance what the
barge contains so that they know what they are dealing with. Double
hulled containers for petroleum products and other hazardous material
should also be required. Hazardous cargo should be accompanied with an
additional vessel which would act as a spotter or alert vehicle, much
like oversized cargo on the road. Communication during an incident
should also be improved. Local officials and responders need to be
informed about an incident immediately so that steps can be taken to
make sure that drinking water supplies are protected and residents can
be evacuated if necessary.
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