According to reports, an oil barge was T-boned by a tanker and split in half near New Orleans on the Mississippi River. How on earth such a slow moving ship was T-boned and split in half is beyond me. My guess: someone was sleeping on the job. With all the technology today, things like this should NOT happen, especially not when you know you are carrying such an environmentally damaging and fire hazardous material such as OIL. Come on people!
Above is a photo of part of the 12-mile oil slick that has occurred due to the barge accident. Apparently there was at least 419.000 gallons of fuel on the barge, however no one knows of yet if all of it is in the river. Being the pessimist that I am, I guarantee it is all in the river and polluting drinking water and killing millions of animals as I write this. I suppose we should be grateful that the 4.2 million gallons of biofuel and 1.3 million gallons of styrene (used for making plastics) did not spill into the Mississippi as well. Of course, they are TELLING us currently that none of the biofuel or styrene leaked but I would not be surprised if in a few days the holding tanks for the biofuel and styrene are found punctured and/or leaking.
The owner of the barge is American Commercial Lines, Inc. based in Indiana. They have sent in four oil spill cleanup companies to TRY and clean up the mess. I can only imagine the damage that is already done. Hurricane Katrina caused massive amounts of damage to the water and ecosystem in the area from waste water, trash, oil spills, hazardous wastes and so on and so on. Now the area has to recover from this tragedy. I don’t know if that poor ecosystem will ever recover, or at least get back to pre-Katrina levels.
With global warming, carbon dioxide, methane and a zillion other pollutants entering our air and water, the last thing we need is an OIL SPILL! Come on people, if you’re going to move oil by water take every precaution necessary….including making sure you have two captains to a ship so if one idiot falls asleep, you still have another hopefully awake! This is ridiculous!!!!!
Green Breaths 