Louisiana Coast – Last Line of Defense?

With oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico for weeks, we’ve known about efforts to stop the flow. We’ve heard details about 75 ton concrete domes, freezing methane gas, catheter piping siphoning off 20% of the flow, top kill. So it at least seems, that round-the-clock efforts were underway from the beginning.

What about the containment side of the problem? We originally heard about oil containment booms and the challenges with deploying them in choppy Gulf waters. However, it then went quiet. We’ve not heard much lately. We’ve held our breath, assuming – or at least hoping – that these challenges have been overcome or worked around. We’ve hoped that critically sensitive areas were being closely monitored and guarded, that contingencies (to utilize booms or naturally or commercially available oil-adherent or oil-absorbent products) had been identified and were ready to be deployed as a last line of defense.

Now we learn that oil is upon us, that beaches are slicked over, that marshes are impacted, that some critical estuaries are lethally inundated. It seems now that our hopes and assumptions have been wrong. Where is the federal government? Is this just BP’s problem? Is this just Louisiana’s problem? Is just another localized economy in shambles, not a problem to the rest of the country, not a concern to the federal government? Is destruction acceptable if it furthers an agenda?

What happened to the last line of defense?

Local fisherman, Billy Mohr, fished Quatre Bayou Pass and the mouth of Bay Cheniere Ronquille on Friday, May 21st. “If you hadn’t been reading the newspaper (about the oil spill), you’d have never known anything was different.” There were no oil containment systems, no work boats, no activity whatsoever, except a handful of other fishing boats.

Saturday morning Mohr heard reports of oil on the Grand Isle beaches, just seven miles east of where he had fished the day before. He immediately knew the implications and began calling local state representatives, alerting them that no containment measures were in place at the passes. These and other nearby passes are the gateways to Barataria Bay, a major estuarial environment, south of New Orleans.

Could the fallout from this be worse than Hurricane Katrina? The estuaries being impacted are complex animal, plant, mineral ecosystems. They are nurseries for future generations of wetlands, waterfowl, and marine life. You can’t just tear them down, rebuild them and bring the nurseries back to life the next year. This will have to be a combination of massive human effort and lengthy natural cycles, which could take decades to get back to normal.

A last line of defense has been absent at Grand Isle and Quatre Bayou Pass. Maybe it’s not too late to get one in place at these and other locations, to prevent further damage in the weeks ahead. Maybe the well is now plugged, maybe not. Either way, the oil now in the Gulf is still a threat to the coast.