Oil Spill News

Managing Fuel Oil Spills: Home Cleanup | Gulf Oil Spill | Oil …

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:00:24 +0000

Fuel oil spills typically occur in the fall at the start of the heating season, when oil deliverers are likely to be new and unfamiliar with the homes they are serving. Homeowner changes could also lead to confusion at oil-delivery time. The spills typically happen in the basements of homes from overfilled tanks or through fill pipes that have no tanks attached! other spills have occurred when oil was mistakenly dumped into septic tank vents or drinking water wells.

Cleanup costs will be paid by whoever is responsible for the spill. if lawyers are involved in determining responsibility, costs will be even higher. therefore, it is particularly important that you do what you can to prevent spills from happening:

Managing Fuel Oil Spills: Home Cleanup | Gulf Oil Spill | Oil …

Oil Spill Victims Speak Out to Claims Czar | Gulf Oil Spill

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:00:21 +0000

The administrator of BP’s $20 billion oil spill claims fund returns to the Gulf Coast this week. He’s discussing increased complaints from those the program is failing to compensate.

Last week, attorney Kenneth Feinberg was greeted in Mississippi and Louisiana by angry residents who’ve filed claims. they say they are not being compensated enough, or not at all for BP’s oil well blowout.

Tuesday, Feinberg was in Bayou La Batre and Orange Beach, holding town hall meetings with business owners and fishermen.

For businesses still struggling with claims issues, it was another chance to voice complaints and ask for answers.

While there was extra security and a metal detector in place–the crowd was polite. the meeting was even more controlled as the residents asking questions of Feinberg were pre-selected. those people represented seafood processors, fishermen, shrimpers, hotel, condo and real estate industries. Not all were happy with what they heard.

“These are very emotionally charged vulnerable people with legitimate concerns of their financial future. I respect the criticism. I respect it. If I didn’t respect that criticism I would stay safe in Washington D.C., but you can’t do that,” says Feinberg.

Feinberg will be in the Florida panhandle Wednesday to meet with claimants.

You can catch him first at the emerald coast conference center in Fort Walton Beach at 8:30 Wednesday morning. Then he will be in Panama City Beach at the Edgewater beach and golf resort conference center from eleven till noon.

At both town halls Feinberg will explain the Gulf Coast Claims Facility Guidelines for interim and final payments, and quick pay claims.

Feinberg has repeatedly promised fairness and more transparency in the process, and says he’s doing the best he can given the more than 470,000 requests for money.

Today, the southern environmental law center released the top-10 list of threatened places in the southeast. because of the gulf oil spill, Alabama’s coast was at the top.

Oil Spill Victims Speak Out to Claims Czar

Oil Spill Victims Speak Out to Claims Czar | Gulf Oil Spill

House Of Representatives | Gulf Oil Spill

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:00:23 +0000

It took U.S. and British teams three months to cap the well in the BP oil spill. a Florida lawmaker doesn’t want to find out how long it would take Cuba to cap a similar catastrophe.

Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Republican who represents part of Florida’s western coast, has introduced a bill aimed at blocking Cuba from drilling a new deepwater oil well in the waters off its northern coast.

Citing threats to his state’s tourism industry and environment in the event of a potential oil spill, Buchanan has expressed concern that the communist country — and the Spanish company it has contracted for running the Chinese-built rig — would be incapable of handling the kind of disaster spill that strained U.S. response teams last spring.

The proposal would treat Cuba’s drilling industry kind of like Iran’s sanctioned energy sector. It would empower the U.S. interior secretary to deny an oil-and-gas lease, or exploration permit, to any company dealing with a country under U.S. sanction or embargo.

Though vague, the language is directed at Spanish oil-and-gas firm Repsol, which is heading up Cuba’s new oil plans. the issue troubling Buchanan is that Cuba is looking to drill for oil even deeper than BP’s Deepwater Horizon

Asked whether Repsol would be able to step in, Repsol representative Kristian Rix told FoxNews.com the company “adheres to the strictest safety measures” and develops “comprehensive accident response plans” in every country where it does business.

“We have every confidence that our teams and equipment are well prepared to carry out operations safely and effectively,” Rix, the firm’s international and financial media manager, said in an e-mail.

A Spanish court began an investigation last year into a spill at one of Repsol’s Mediterranean rigs, though that leak was not anywhere near as colossal as the BP spill.

For the new rig, the United States could not directly block Cuba from drilling in its own waters. but under Buchanan’s bill the U.S. could threaten Repsol’s projects elsewhere in U.S. territory. the company operates rigs near Texas and Louisiana. with his bill, Buchanan wants to compel Repsol to abandon the Cuba drilling to protect its other assets.

The company earlier backed off a natural gas project in Iran after facing pressure from the United States over Iran’s nuclear program.

Buchanan’s not the only prominent Floridian to warn about the danger of new international drilling near the Sunshine State’s shores. Former Sen. Bob Graham warned in a speech Jan. 14 that Cuba is planning other drilling projects with a Russian firm. according to an account of the speech in the Miami Herald, Graham said the United States should partner with Mexico to draft new international drilling safety standards in the Gulf. In addition, he said, Mexico should press Cuba to impose such standards. Graham said the BP spill should be a “wake-up call.”

The BP spill dumped an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, hammering the coastline and offshore waters as well as the region’s fishing and tourism economies. Florida’s $60 billion-a-year tourism industry stood to suffer the most. a report put out last summer by the U.S. Travel Association said Florida’s losses over the next three years could amount to nearly $19 billion.

Buchanan last expressed concerns about the Cuba project in a letter to President Obama

House Of Representatives | Gulf Oil Spill

BP Broke Civil Racketeering Law in Gulf Oil Spill, Lawyers Say in …

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:00:16 +0000

BP Plc broke civil racketeering laws by engaging in a pattern of violations that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to lawyers suing the company.

Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup – Water Matters – State of the Planet

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:00:21 +0000

Photo credit: cesarharada.com

“Humanity’s plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint,” said Captain Charles Moore, who, in 1997, discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Its name is misleading because the huge expanse of floating marine debris is actually more like a soup of confetti-sized plastic bits, produced by the runoff of our throwaway lifestyle that has made its way into our oceans.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the most notorious stretch of plastic debris, is located northeast of Hawaii, about 1000 miles from Hawaii and California. It’s an enormous and immeasurable area of marine debris, trapped by one of the five major subtropical gyres (systems of ocean currents) that corrals and carries marine garbage into its vortex. 5 Gyres, an organization that partners with Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation to study plastic pollution in the ocean, has sent expeditions across the North Pacific Gyre, the North and South Atlantic Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Gyre, and found plastic in every one of them, though concentrations vary. Some reports have estimated the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to be twice the size of the continental United States, but no one can accurately measure the boundaries of the trash gyres because they are vast, remote and always shifting with ocean conditions. In any case, plastic marine debris is now found on the surface of every ocean on Earth.

Ocean gyres. Photo credit: NOAA

Some plastic and marine debris comes from fishing gear, offshore oil and gas platforms, and ships. But 80 percent of it comes from the land—litter that gets stuck in storm drains and is washed into rivers and out to sea, the legal and illegal dumping of garbage and appliances, and plastic resin pellets inadvertently spilled and unloaded by plastic manufacturers. Trash Travels, Ocean Conservancy’s 2010 report, states that 60 percent of all marine debris in 2009 consisted of “disposable” items, with the most common being cigarettes, plastic bags, food containers, bottle caps and plastic bottles. And no matter where the litter originates, once it reaches the ocean, it becomes a planetary problem as garbage travels thousands of miles carried by the gyres.

The lightness and durability that make plastic such a useful and versatile material for manufacturers also make it a long-term problem for the environment. Trash Travels estimates that plastic bags can take 20 years to decompose, plastic bottles up to 450 years, and fishing line, 600 years; but in fact, no one really knows how long plastics will remain in the ocean. With exposure to UV rays and the ocean environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments. The majority of the plastic found in the ocean are tiny pieces less than 1 cm. in size, with the mass of 1/10 of a paper clip.

Photo credit: Chris Jordan

The Sea Education Association’s (SEA) expedition to the western North Atlantic Ocean found bits of HDPE (high density polyethylene), LDPE (low density polyethylene), and PP (polypropylene) from items such as milk containers, plastic bags, and straws, which float on the surface because they are less dense than seawater. It did not find PET (polyethylene terephthalate), PVC (polyvinyl chloride), and PS (polystyrene solid), which sink because they are denser than seawater. Algalita, which sampled down to depths of 100 hundred meters throughout the eastern side of the North Pacific Gyre, found LDPE, styrene, PP and PET.

Last year, SEA released the results of its 22-year study of plastic pollution in the western North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. The greatest amount of plastic was found in the North Atlantic Gyre, which contains the Sargasso Sea. The most plastic collected during a 30-minute tow was 1069 pieces, which, if scaled up, would be equal to about 580,000 pieces per square kilometer. The average concentration of samples would roughly equal 20,300 pieces per square kilometer. While discarded plastic in the U.S. quadrupled between 1980 and 2008, however, the concentration of debris in the Atlantic did not appear to increase. Where has it all gone? Lead scientist Kara Lavender Law speculated that some is being eaten by marine animals, some has broken down into bits too small to be captured by tow nets, some gets washed up onto beaches, and some is sinking to the ocean floor. According to Project Kaisei, a non-profit also studying marine debris, 70 percent of the man-made waste that enters the ocean sinks to the bottom. That means that the plastic soup is only the 30 percent of the debris that floats. No one knows what lies deep down because so far, there have been no studies of the plastic on the ocean floor.

But we know the plastic debris on the surface of the ocean is taking its toll on marine life. Animals get strangled in fishing lines, nets, and plastic litter. Fish and seabirds ingest bits of plastic they mistake for food that can block their intestinal tracts and kill them, or make them feel full so that they do not eat real food.One of Moore’s expeditions collected hundreds of samples of fish, and conducted necropsies on them: over 1/3 had ingested polluted plastic fragments, including one 2.5 inch fish that had 84 pieces of plastic in its tiny gut. In 1999, Moore’s research in the Central Pacific found six times more plastic than zooplankton in the water. In 2002, off the coast of Southern California, he discovered the ratio of plastic to plankton was 2.5. Preliminary results on samples Algalita took in 2008 already show that there is a significant increase in the ratio of plastic to plankton in the water.

Plastic bits also create habitats for microorganisms and other species, allowing would-be invasive species to hitch rides to new areas of the ocean.

A recent study found that plastics take up and accumulate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and organochlorine pesticides such as DDD, a derivative of DDT. Over 50 percent of the plastic samples studied contained PCBs, and over 75 percent contained PAHs. According to Moore, plastic debris can attract and concentrate POPs up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater, and when consumed by marine animals, the POPs endanger both the creatures that ingest them and humans higher up on the food chain, especially infants. Moore has said, “No fish monger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.”

Despite all these environmental and potential human health impacts, most scientists agree that it is not feasible to clean up the plastic soup in our oceans. The areas are huge, and the debris is unevenly distributed and always shifting. A cleanup would entail filtering enormous amounts of water, and the by-catch of plankton and other marine organisms would be harmful to ocean ecosystems. Moreover, the fact that the trash gyres are in the open ocean, in international waters, makes it difficult to get governments to invest in research or cleanup efforts.

Undaunted, Project Kaisei, on its two expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre, has been working to develop and test new methods for removal of some of the plastic waste. Its goal is to learn more about how to efficiently remove the floating plastic, and to use new techniques to recycle the material into fuel or other products. Project Kaisei plans to test new, and scaled-up catch methods on future expeditions, as well as passive netting and catch methods that require little fuel and have low impacts on marine life.

Moore and Algalita believe that the best way to deal with the plastic debris is to stop the waste from entering the ocean in the first place: to replace, reduce, reuse and recycle our plastics. Marcus Eriksen, one of the founders of 5 Gyres, also promotes beach cleanup because “What we now know is that if we stop adding more plastic to the ocean, in time the gyres will kick out the plastic pollution they currently hold. If you want to clean the gyre, clean your beach.” In 2010, approximately 500,000 volunteers did just that, taking part in the 25th Annual International Coastal Cleanup and removing millions of pounds of marine debris from 6,000 sites around the world, including all 50 U.S. states.

Photo credit: Ocean Conservancy

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has launched a three-year scientific study expedition to the Antarctic Ocean, and is planning a voyage to the North Pacific gyre in July. This spring, 5 Gyres is preparing to sail across the South Pacific Gyre from Chile to Easter Island. Findings from these expeditions and others will be shared at the 5th International Marine Debris Conference in March, 2011.

Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup – Water Matters – State of the Planet

Spill Commission's Warnings about America's Arctic

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:00:16 +0000

Spill Commission's Warnings about America's Arctic

Gulf Coast Claims Facility could be last hope for Creola man's 13 …

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:00:19 +0000

MARY WALKER BAYOU, Miss. — First it was a hurricane. Then an oil spill. After that, vandals and state environmental regulations. Bryan Leveritt has run into obstacle after obstacle on his 13-year-long odyssey to rescue a 140-foot-long ship from the salt marshes of south Mississippi and restore it for charity missions. He now faces what may be his last chance — convincing the adjusters at the …

New Lawsuit Against BP Raises Specter of Criminal Charges …

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:00:20 +0000

New Lawsuit Against BP Raises Specter of Criminal Charges

January 26, 2011 7:19 am

Anyone wondering if the government will ever bring actual criminal charges against BP is no doubt taking note of a new civil lawsuit claiming the oil giant broke federal civil racketeering laws both before and after its oil spill, and “to this day.”

The civil action – which offers a rough blueprint of charges a prosecutor might consider – is being reported by Bloomberg News and other outlets as claiming that “…BP’s fraudulent actions and omissions were part of a broader pattern of unlawful conduct that it has employed over the years to place profits over safety.” The suit was filed by liaison counsel for the court-appointed committee representing plaintiffs.

In effect, the lawsuit asserts that BP knew exactly what it was doing and committed fraud by lying about it. The lawyers claim that the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the resulting oil spill were “…foreshadowed by a string of disastrous incidents and near misses in BP’s operations on land and at sea [and that BP has] since at least 2001, used this enterprise to conduct the related acts of mail and wire fraud comprising the pattern of racketeering.”

This lawsuit, at minimum, increases the rhetoric aimed at BP’s post-spill recovery effort. These are the sort of assertions that one would expect from a rigorous prosecution, but the only governmental equivalent to this has come from Alabama at the state level and communities like Orange Beach at the municipal level.

This kind of lawsuit raises the fraud question as have shareholder lawsuits and other claims. Eventually, these civil actions put law enforcement on notice that, sooner or later, people are going to start asking why these facts have not motivated more assertive actions in the criminal arena.

Read the Bloomberg report here: bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-24/bp-broke-civil-racketeering-law-in-gulf-oil-spill-lawyers-say-in-lawsuit.html

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  New Lawsuit Against BP Raises Specter of Criminal Charges …

Security added at Gulf oil spill claims meetings – US Gulf of …

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:00:24 +0000

Security added at Gulf oil spill claims meetings – US Gulf of …

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Security added at Gulf oil spill claims meetings – US Gulf of …

N.Y.U. to start oil-spill cleanup on Bleecker St …

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:00:21 +0000

Posted by admin Top Stories Thursday, January 13th, 2011

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A cyclist in the Bleecker St. bike lane rode by the section of oil-contaminated soil — behind the fencing — at Washington Square Village. (Photo by Albert Amateau)

While about 5,000 gallons of the leaked No. 6 heating oil was removed soon after the leak was discovered from two tanks in the boiler room and underground areas in front of 3 and 4 Washington Square Village, about 11,000 gallons of congealed oil in the soil must be removed as part of a deeper remediation.

Beth Morningstar, N.Y.U. assistant vice president for strategic initiatives in the university operations division, promised anxious Washington Square Village residents that she would respond to calls around the clock from residents during the cleanup project, which is expected to be complete by early May 2011.

Stephanie Kung, health and safety director of N.Y.U. operations and the person in charge of the cleanup project, told residents that no weekend work has been scheduled at this time. Groundwater test wells, installed soon after the emergency removal was completed, will continue testing. Random air quality tests in public areas of Washington Square Village buildings 3 and 4 will continue during the project, Kung said.

Barbara Backer, co-chairperson of the Washington Square Village Tenants Association, however, called for air testing in apartments on the first residential floor of the buildings.

“There is a whole row of apartments in buildings 3 and 4 with vents in the kitchens and bathrooms and there is air coming in. I can feel it when I take a shower,” Backer said. Moreover, cracks in the masonry of the buildings also admit air, Backer added.

Kung said she would definitely look into the possibility of more extensive air monitoring, including tests at the Morton Williams supermarket on the south side of Bleecker St. The current plan calls for random air monitoring 10 to 20 feet downwind from the construction area.

Residents and neighbors, including Judith Callet, residential chairperson of the Bleecker Area Merchants and Residents Association, are also anxious about auto and bicycle traffic when the parking lane on Bleecker St. is closed at the end of January and traffic is confined to one lane during the construction period. They asked N.Y.U. to urge the city Department of Transportation to limit traffic on Bleecker St. during the project.

However, Jo Hamilton, chairperson of Community Board 2, told residents that D.O.T. has existing traffic protocols wherever construction impacts on street and sidewalk circulation. Nevertheless, the C.B. 2 Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on the cleanup’s traffic impact, Hamilton said. Kung said that D.O.T. is expected to issue construction and fence permits by the time digging begins. While the planted area between the Bleecker St. sidewalk and the buildings — where the soil is saturated with oil — has already been enclosed behind a chain-link fence, a working-area fence will soon extend to the curb.

The plan calls for excavating “slowly, 2 feet at a time,” said Kung. Shoring will be installed to support the 17-story buildings. The westernmost tank, No. 3, is to be removed along with oil-soaked soil. The easternmost tank, No. 4, was emptied and cleaned during the emergency remediation and current plans call for leaving it in place; it could be removed if conditions demand, Kung said.

All contaminated soil will be removed by truck, and clean soil will be used for backfill.

No. 6 heating oil has the consistency of sludge when cold and must be heated before use as heating fuel. The four Washington Square Village buildings had ceased using their boilers for heating and had been on the university co-generation grid before the leak occurred; the heating oil was a backup in the event of an interruption of co-generation power. Now, however, the backup fuel is natural gas, according to university officials at the Jan. 5 meeting.

Residents said that initial reports about whether No. 6 oil was hazardous were confusing. The oil is classified in state agency documents as being in the “not hazardous” category, but the same documents use the word “hazardous” to describe the fuel when it contaminates soil.

Gary Parker, N.Y.U. director of community and government affairs, said he plans to hold information meetings for residents, community leaders and representatives of elected officials around 3 p.m. on Wednesdays every two weeks during construction.

Ellen Peterson Lewis, a public member of the C.B. 2 Environment, Public Safety and Public Health Committee, represented the board at the Jan. 5 meeting. Also attending were Ann Arlen, a former C.B. 2 member and longtime head of the board’s Environment Committee, as well as aides to Assemblymember Deborah Glick, state Senator Tom Duane, Borough President Scott Stringer and Congressmember Jerrold Nadler.

Short URL: eastvillagernews.com/?p=532

N.Y.U. to start oil-spill cleanup on Bleecker St …