knoxxsouthy wrote:
Elinda,
Did the spill you dealt with completely ***** up the local water life?
Only temporarily. It was pretty light oil and mostly stayed afloat. So, while some areas were temporarily shut down to lobstering and clamming there were no long term effects to either the eco-system or the industry.
Our biggest protection efforts went towards a marsh. We had some success in actually declaring some areas strictly off limits as the harm to salt marshes simply from walking on them is pretty well documented. In 2006 (10 years after the event) following a lengthy damage assessment and reparations the thing was declared 'over' (the responsible party had no further responsibilities).
I had responded to other spills of lesser quantity but much more detrimental to the environment. There was a spill of about 12k gallons of #6 oil from a power plant on the NH side of the Piscataqua river once. This oil sunk quickly really making a mess of the lobstering in the area. It was however, localized.
The area covered by this Gulf spill alone, is enough to make a clean up seem unreasonable.