Gulf Restoration Network

Controlled Burn Considered for Gulf Spill Blog - BPs Oil Drilling Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday, 27 April 2010 20:59

Not quite sure how to respond to this just yet.  Today's daily briefing from the Unified Command rolled out this idea.  It's terrifying on its face, lighting up a 2,000 square mile area of the Gulf that's being expanded by uncontrolled, twin gysers of oil from the sea floor 5,000 feet down.

More details are necessary to sort out how this would work, and why it's preferable to increased clean up and containment efforts at the spill site coordinated with protective boom deployment at the coastline where it will eventuallly come ashore.  In the two flyovers GRN has taken in the last two days, we've been astounded by the lack of activity at the spill surface.  Both on Sunday and Monday, in seemingly good weather, no skimming was seen, and no boom deployment was taking place.  Despite all the claims of the resources being marshalled by BP and directed by the Coast Guard, the only sea surface containment efforts consisted of two planes dropping chemical dispersant. 

Our concern remains the marine mammal populations in the area, the potential impacts to bluefin tuna spawning, and the Gulf's threatened and endangered sea turtle species.

Here's the current track of the spill, just 20 miles from the Bird's Foot Delta of the Louisiana coast:

Aaron Viles is GRN's campaign director