The anatomy of an oil spill cleanup: What works and what doesn’t

. Citizens don’t. The second wave of cleanup
happens once the oil makes landfall (more on this later). That’s where
the citizen volunteers and NGOs come in.

Booms — those orange tube-like things you’ve seen floating in the
water in images across the news — have been used in the current
cleanup. These are inflatable devices, placed both offshore and very
close to the coast, meant to create a literal barrier past which the oil
cannot pass or which can absorb the oil.

Crews will also use skimming
devices, supplied by the Navy to the Coast Guard, to scoop the oil from
the surface of the water.

However, uncooperative weather has made the
booms ineffective. According to Reuters,
“Weather is one of our biggest challenges,” said Ayana Mcintosh-Lee, a
BP spokesperson. “Wind and waves are up. Seas are at 6-8 feet which can
make it difficult to deploy boom.” In some areas, “some of the boom
appeared to have broken free and washed onto an area beach and other
boom appeared to have sunk,” according to the Times-Picayune.

Unfortunately, it seems implausible that any of this will work for the
volume of this spill, which could equal the size of the Exxon Valdez
spill with about two months.

The oil rig abalze. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard.

What works when oil makes landfall, what won’t, and what we learned from the Exxon Valdez oil spill
Apologies to the entrepreneurs hoping that their waste hair balls, straw
gobs, and dried mushroom-bit inventions were going to be a viable means
of sopping up BP’s current mess once it hits the beach, but let us be
blunt: They won’t. (At least not right away.)

Not just because the
government does not have these items on a list, but because this is an
emergency and new product inventors won’t be able to meet logistical
needs of what is needed immediately. Availability rules in desperate
times, so whatever government-approved materials currently stockpiled in the
warehouse closest to the spill are likely to
be used.

In responding to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, much was learned about
what works for cost-effective oil spill cleanup, and logistics turned
out to be the key to it all.

Inventing a dispersant
(chemical agents such as surfactants, solvents, and other compounds
used to reduce the effect of oil spills by changing the chemical and
physical properties of the oil) or bioremediation
agent (microorganisms or biological agents used to break down or remove
oil) was only a small part of the solution then, and it still is that
way.

Some of the spill-response treatments proposed after Valdez were
found to be more hazardous than oil for marine organisms. For example, steam-cleaning rocks, in retrospect, wasn’t such a good idea. (Think
about the carbon footprint.) And you can’t remove all the oil
from a duck’s feathers; it would die. The nuances of what it is used and
how it used have everything to do with “successful” clean up.

Put more succinctly, oil dispersants and bioremediation agents — the
kinds of things that the non-professionals will seek to help with
cleanup — are suitable for cleaning up oil only after it makes
landfall.

Such cleanup products can only be used by public authorities
responding to an emergency if they are individually listed on the National
Contingency Plan Product Schedule. Additionally, many states
require that remediation products be approved before they can be used.

It’s important to note that rescuing wildlife with cleaning and
dispersing agents should only be done if a product is known to
offer clear benefits to the species of concern. Work with local fish and
wildlife agencies is imperative.

A star fish washes ashore on the Chandeleur Islands, home of the
Breton National Wildlife Refuge, off the coast of southeastern Lousiana
Tuesday, April 27, 2010. Photo: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert.

The good news in the Gulf oil spill is that the water and air are much
warmer year round in the Gulf Coast than in Alaska. Bioremediation will
proceed as fast as nature can allow.

The possible bad news is that any
oil or tar balls that end up under rocks and logs or which is
incorporated into marsh soils will be re-suspended and sent all over the
place if there is a hurricane.

The really good news is that this didn’t
happen during a hurricane.

By the way, if you’re a volunteer or local and you get the black
foulness on your clothes, shoes, land, boat, pets, or whatever, there
are off-the-shelf, EPA-approved bio-remediation products that you can
buy in low volume that will make it go away fairly rapidly. Oil
Gone Easy, aka “S-200,”
is one of many such products.

More
from TreeHugger:

• Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: What, When, and Where. Plus: What You Can Do About It

• The ‘Katrina of Smell’ is Attacking News Orleans Thanks to BP Oil Spill
• Will The BP Oil Spill Be Our Collective Zen Slap Into Eco-Realization? Let’s Hope So
• Watch How Hair Mats Can Be Used in Oil Spill Cleanup (Video)
• Edward Burtynsky’s “Oil ” (Slideshow)
• BP Gulf Oil Spill Cheat Sheet: A Timeline of Unfortunate Events

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