Pensacola Bay to be Boomed Tonight

UPDATED BELOW
The entrance to Pensacola Bay will be boomed this afternoon and tonight. The decision was made between 12 noon and 1 pm today by Dusty Warner, Sectional Superintendent for the Unified Command out of Mobile.

Not long after that, we were wandering along the beach at Ft. Pickens and happened to run into Warner. He told us he had just approved a modified version of the V-shaped boom proposal submitted some weeks ago by Escambia County.

"Most of the bay entrance will be boomed," he explained. "One part will remain open."

Booms will be extended across the bay entrance to contain the oil and channel it, like a funnel, to the opening. A single oil skimmer will be stationed at the opening to skim oil from the surface.

We spoke as spongy orange tarballs (see left) and smaller, black weathered tarballs were washing ashore in the surf all along the western tip of Santa Rosa Island.

Warner, who also is a veteran ranger for the U.S. Park Service, said he serves as a Unified Command superintendent for emergency response "incidents," as they are known, all around the country. He's been in Mobile since shortly after the Deepwater Horizon well blow-out.

According to Warner, the revised booming plan will present no danger to sea turtles.

"If a turtle comes up against a hard surface like a boom it will turn away and seek another route," he said. "But if it meets something soft like those," he said, gesturing toward a large stack of plastic pom-poms near near the bay entrance, "a sea turtle will try to push through and get entangled and die."

Consequently, the bags of pom-poms arranged by subcontractors awaiting permission from the Unified Command (see below) will not be used, after all, at the entrance to the bay.

"They won't work anyway," Ranger Warner added. "They're pretty much worthless in the current out there."


UPDATE
6-11 6pmAbout 5:00 pm Escambia County issued a press release confirming Pensacola Pass will close "at 7:00 p.m. today, June 11." The News Journal reported about two hours after our initial conversation with Ranger Warner that "boom will be deployed across the opening of the pass and the pass will be navigationally restricted during incoming (flood) tide as waters enter Pensacola Bay."

New, Much Larger Oil Leak

In yet another parallel to the Montara deep well oil spill in Australia last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced overnight that BP's Deepwater Horizon well is leaking five times as much oil as the oil corporation previously admitted.

From today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

As a sheen of oil moved closer to the Louisiana coast Wednesday, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revised their estimates of the amount of oil that has been leaking from the oil well from 1,000 barrels a day to up to 5,000 barrels a day, or about 210,000 gallons.

BP officials also discovered a new leak in the twisted pipelines that were severed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico last week. But Doug Suttles, chief operating officer with BP Exploration and Production, said this does not change the overall amount of oil believed to be coming from the well.
* * *
As winds shifted to the southeast Wednesday, forecasts showed for the first time that the outer bands of the oil slick spilling from a deep well in the Gulf of Mexico will reach the southern fringes of the Louisiana coast by late Friday.

Forecasts called for continued winds from the southeast through the weekend and also unusually high tides, meaning oil could continue to move into the fragile Mississippi River delta region for days.

According to New York Times reporters Campbell Robertson and Leslie Kaufman, when Suttles insists that BP considers there is no discrepancy in the volume of leaking oil, it's because, "The new, far larger estimate of the leakage rate... was within a range of estimates given the inexact science of determining the rate of a leak so far below the ocean’s surface."

In other words, to BP oil officials 5,000 barrels of leaking crude per day is the same as 1,000 barrels a day. Newer New Math? Or, the usual corporate dissembling? Confusion -- and quite probably misinformation-- rages among the various news reports coming out of the Gulf of Mexico.

As happened in Australia, as well, separating fact from corporate fiction is a tough task for journalists when the site of the disaster remains at sea. As has happened before, however, the true magnitude of the leak will only begin to become apparent when the oil leak begins to come ashore.

WWL-TV explains with visuals:



edited and updated 4-29 am

Pensacola First Response To Oily Armaggedon

"Most people around here have no idea what is about to happen. It will be a major, major disaster."

-- U.S. Park Service Ranger, Ft. Pickens, Santa Rosa Island
(Apr. 28, 2010)

As of this writing, it has not yet been reported that the U.S. Coast Guard has managed to set alight any of the pools of oil floating offshore in Louisiana near the site of the Deepwater disastrous oil spill. The effort can do little to stem the tide of oil heading shoreward, anyway.

At most, only "a few thousand gallons" can be set on fire at any one time. After the fires die away, toxic residue will remain in the water for months or even years, and eventually wash ashore or sink to smother sea life.

Prevailing winds are expected to shift as soon as late this afternoon. That may make corralling small clumps of floating oil and setting them afire even more difficult, if not impossible. As a midday report on the Pensacola News Journal web site reports, "Shifting winds this afternoon are expected to push a massive sheen of oil closer to the Florida coast in coming days."

Locally, the U.S. Park Service has gone to "Cat 2" status. The alert status is equivalent to a strong hurricane endangering mariners that falls just below "major" hurricane status. Booms are being unloaded and placed along particularly sensitive shorelines near Ft. Pickens and Perdido Key.

Park employees tell us, however, that the booms are largely a mere palliative. "They really can't do much if anything to protect the sea life or the Gulf environment," one ranger who asked for anonymity told us today. "It's for public relations as much as anything."

Chasidy Fisher Hobbs of the respected, very mainstream "Emerald Coastkeepers, Inc.," sent out an email this afternoon that's gone as viral as any email can. Here it is, more or less formatted as received:

THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH AN INDUSTRY WHOSE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO CLEANING UP A MESS IS TO BURN IT!!

Here are a few things I have learned this morning: We can only hope that this terrible tragedy moves our country closer to energy independence with alternative energy sources.

1. BP contractors are not accepting help from any volunteers and do not expect to;

2. Apparently BP contractors at Pensacola NAS have a plan to keep the oil just offshore and then collect it in a terminal containment boom for removal;

3. It has been deemed impossible to block the pass due to fluctuating currents;

4. Trained personnel have been brought in to our area and have begun booming off sensitive areas around the pass;

5. A central operations unit is being set up in Mobile to coordinate efforts in this area should the burning of the oil prove folly.

We may not be able to help remove oil today, but we can all help to keep rigs out of Florida waters. Thanks to one your Directors, Derek Cosson (ProgressivePensacola.com) you can help with a few simple clicks.

There is now a form letter on our website so you can send a message to Florida legislators letting them know that we do not want rigs in State waters. Please take 1 minute to send a message: http://www.emeraldcoastkeeper.org/2010/04/27/327/>

Then, pass the link on and get as many folks to send the message as you can.