500,000 Gallons Of Oil Spilled Due To Ike

AP Study: Hurricane Destroyed Oil Platforms, Tossed Storage Tanks And Punctured Pipelines In Gulf

(AP)  Ike's fury might have helped prevent worse environmental damage. Its rough water, heavy rains and wind helped disperse pollution.

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.

[riddelup]

Coming to a shore near you.

[mjvw2]

ALL OF THIS WOULD CREAT JOBS /

Posted by krusor

for those of us who can spell

[maine11111]

Its a shame that we as humans cannot take better care of this planet!!! I would hate to see this planet 50 years from now, if there is a planet left. We humans will always be a virus to this planet. We are the only species on this planet that cannot coexist with the environment!!!!

[keating54u]

www.keatingeconomics.com

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!

[rochoa1977]

i work for exxonmobil refinery in baton rouge, louisiana. sure we make enourmous profits, but exxonmobil spends over 400 billion dollars a year in exploration. we make 40 billion in profit. that is only 10 percent!!! 10 cents for every dollar spent!!what about the pharmaceutical companies making money??

[krusor]

CANT WE DRILL FOR OIL ON DRY LAND INSTEAD OF KILLING OUR OCEANS?
WE NEED ELECTRIC CARS / SOLAR POWER / WIND POWER
ALL OF THIS WOULD CREAT JOBS /

[terrapin78]

To quote a loser:

Say it ain''t so Joe!

[freedomobama]

Great. In the past month it sounds like the world is ending!

[tbuckl]

With storms like Hurricane Ike that destroyed oil platforms, storage tanks and ripped open pipelines and which caused the spilling 500,000 gallons of oil in to the enviroment has proved why we need not to drill more wells in the ocean.

[yongamerica]

Oh Yeah, off shore drilling in the stormy Atlantic sounds real appealing now. The net result of storm damage has the potential to be equivalent to dozens of Exxon Valdez oil spills all along the eastern and western ocean shores.

[rochoa1977]

Why should the oil companies pay for all of this?? Building new refineries won''t solve the gas crisis in the US.

[rochoa1977]

42 GALLONS EQUAL A BARREL. NOT 52 !!

[legacyabq]

cwazywabbit Im just wondering.. You always talk tough about accountability and harsh justice..
Are you a police officer?

[govwatch-2009]

That''s all? People spill more than that in one day pumping gas in their car.

[andor3]

"Eleven thousand barrels is a drop in the bucket considering the size of the hurricane."

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.

[missingamerica]

I remember posing the question on CBS: What happens if all of this new drilling occurs up and down both of Florida''s, and a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane decides to act like tropical depression Gustav and bounce back and forth and up and down both of Florida''s costs?

(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...

[georgew1956]

sell grain to the foriegners for 385 dollars and get even they don''t care to rob.

[ubrew12]

PugHenry3 said: "Oil companies would have to be crazy to invest even a nickel in new refineries or even do basic repairs to existing refineries. "

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???

[ubrew12]

Hey, PugHenry3:
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!!!

[beehive21-2009]

Nationalize Oil ,we nationalized the Banks ,yesterday,Nationalize Oil.