500,000 Gallons Of Oil Spilled Due To Ike
AP Study: Hurricane Destroyed Oil Platforms, Tossed Storage Tanks And Punctured Pipelines In Gulf
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A pump jack is seen toppled over in floodwaters left behind by Hurricane Ike on the High Island Oil Field, Sept. 17, 2008, in High Island, Texas. Several pump jacks were damaged or destroyed and left partially submerged in what is normally dry ground along the Gulf Coast. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
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An oil sheen can be seen floating on waters covering a flooded oilfield in Cameron Parish in southwest Louisiana, Sept. 15, 2008. (AP/La. Dept. of Enviro. Quality)
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Unified Command responders discuss conditions at a diesel spill site on Goat Island, Texas, Sept. 25, 2008. Teams have been working throughout the Houston-Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas, areas to identify, assess and remediate pollution sites since the passing of Hurricane Ike. (AP/U.S. Coast Guard/L.F. Chambers)
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Photo Essay After Ike A look at what the killer hurricane left behind
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Photo Essay Back To Galveston Thousands return to devastated island city for first time since Ike despite hazards.
Air quality tests by Texas environmental regulators found no problems even in communities near industrial complexes, where power outages and high winds in some cases knocked out emergency devices that safely burn off chemicals. But the storm also zapped many of the state's permanent air pollution monitors in the region.
"We came out of this a lot better than we could have been, especially thinking where the storm hit," said Kelly Cook, the homeland security coordinator for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Katrina ranked as among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, with about 9 million gallons of oil spilled. But Ike's storm surge was less severe than feared - 12 feet rather than 20-feet plus - and the dikes, levees and bulkheads built around the region's heavy industry mostly held.
Much of that infrastructure is protected by a 1960s-era Army Corps of Engineers system of 15-foot levees similar to the one around New Orleans that failed catastrophically during Katrina. In that storm, floodwaters dislodged an oil tank at a Murphy Oil Corp. refinery in Meraux, La., spilling more than 1 million gallons of oil into the surrounding neighborhoods, canals and playgrounds.
Ike's toll on wildlife is still unfolding. Only a few pelicans and osprey turned up oiled, but the storm upended nature. Winds blew more than 1,000 baby squirrels from their nests. The storm's surge pushed saltwater into freshwater marshes and bayous, killing grasses where cattle graze and displacing alligators. Flooding also stranded cows.
The storm also may mangle migration. The Texas coast is a pit stop for birds heading south for the winter. But Ike wiped out many of their food sources, stripping berries from trees and nectar-producing flowers from plants, said Gina Donovan, executive director of the Houston Audubon Society, which operates 17 bird sanctuaries in Texas.
"It is going to cause wildlife to suffer for awhile," she said.
Along the Houston Ship Channel, a tanker truck floating in 12-feet-high flood waters slammed into a storage tank at the largest biodiesel refinery in the country, causing a leak of roughly 2,100 gallons of vegetable oil. The plant, owned by GreenHunter Energy Inc., uses chicken fat and beef tallow to make biodiesel shipped overseas. It opened just months earlier.
Oneal Galloway of Slidell, La., called to report oil in his neighborhood. The town, north of Lake Pontchartrain, was flooded with Ike's surge. He said oil had washed down the streets.
"It looked like a rainbow in the water," Galloway told the AP. "The residue of the oil is all over our fences, there were brown spots in the yard where it killed the grass."
The likely culprit was not a refinery or oil well, according to Shannon Davis, the director of the parish's public works department, but a neighbor brewing biodiesel in his backyard with used cooking grease.
For more information visit the Web sites for Multi-Agency Post-Hurricane Ike Pollution Response at strikeforcenews.com, or the U.S. Coast Guard's National Response Center.
By Associated Press Writers Dina Cappiello, Frank Bass and Cain Burdeau
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The secrets of tennis legend 
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See all 34 CommentsPosted by krusor
for those of us who can spell
McCain Received $166,000 In Campaign Contributions from Charles Keating and his Associates.
McCain Used Keatings Private Planes on Nine Occasions
McCain Had Direct Financial Ties To Keating
When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself. ''You''re a liar,'' McCain said
when asked about the investments. He challenged reporters saying, ''It''s up to you to find that out, kids......
OH YEAH DRILL DRILL DRILL SAID THE PIRATE!
WE NEED ELECTRIC CARS / SOLAR POWER / WIND POWER
ALL OF THIS WOULD CREAT JOBS /
Say it ain''t so Joe!
Are you a police officer?
Seems like quite a lot--enough to fill a swimming pool, or we can talk about the ecological and wildlife damage it can do.
Which is really the point since oil shills arguing for drilling in Alaska claimed no spills.
This should end the argument--no drilling in Alaska, not now, not ever.
(http://168.100.10.114/ATL-06A/JavaPlot.html)
I added "Gee, with the storm surge throwing ocean water inland, won''t it carry spilled oil from those new rigs inland a long way, creating a horrendous ecological disaster?"
The oil boyz (they alternate between being Palin/McCain trolls and oil boyz) promptly said that hurricanes don''t cause spills from the oil platforms because they have enough advance warning to seal them up.
lolll...uh-huh....like Katrina didn''t cause any spills...and now, like Ike didn''t cause any spills...
Well, ya got that right. Build a refinery, and the price per gallon of the product you''re selling FALLS???? Why would ANYONE want to abett THAT outcome???
A 100 mile by 100 mile array of solar thermal collectors over the desert Southwestern U.S. absorbs enough energy to power the ENTIRE U.S.: day and night. No other energy source required. A solar thermal collector is just a mirror, a pipe, and a molten salt solution running through the pipe. The hot salt is later used to drive a steam turbine. These are all 19th century technologies: a competent plumber could build a solar thermal collector in his/her backyard using ordinary materials, and it would last for decades depending on how well built/maintained.
This country, and the world, is going to pay a HUGE cost for its oil addiction. And the cost of avoiding that fate is available at your neighborhood hardware store, and has been for a century. Vote for McCain if you want to prevent developing that solution for ANOTHER 8 years!!!
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