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Heavy oil "blanket" hits Louisiana wetlands
VENICE, Louisiana |
VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) - A blanket of heavy oil has washed ashore in Louisiana's fragile marshlands, in the first significant heavy oil landfall from the Gulf of Mexico spill, state Governor Bobby Jindal said on Wednesday.
"The day that we have all been fearing is upon us today," Jindal said after a boat tour to the southernmost point of the Mississippi river estuary.
"This wasn't tar balls. This wasn't sheen. This is heavy oil in our wetlands," he told a news conference in Venice, Louisiana. "It's already here but we know more is coming."
Previously, officials had been reporting "oil debris" in the form of tar balls, or light surface "sheen" coming ashore in outlying parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Jindal said Louisiana's wetlands were "the Gulf's nursery," nurturing diverse wildlife and protecting the coastline against erosion.
He appealed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to issue a permit to allow the construction of 80 miles of sand levees to protect the Louisiana coastline from further damage.
That project, which would cost $350 million, has been delayed despite an intense effort by the state and Plaquemines Parish (county) officials to comply with the Corps' requirements, added Jindal.
He said crews were ready to start building the network of sand levees as soon as permission was granted.
Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser said the sight of the oil and the delay in granting permission for the levees project affected him physically.
"Everything that that blanket of oil has covered will die. There is no way to clean it. ... I am sick to my stomach right now," he said.
(Reporting by Matt Bigg; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Todd Eastham)
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You are so right. I live about 4 miles from the beach in CA, its not like the oil will come here.
And those oil rigs off our coast… well, I’m sure that the oil industry learned their lesson. I am confident that one of those rigs wont have an “accident”.
And all of the oil tankers, heck after the Exxon valdez accident, the oil companies talked about making all of the tankers double hulled to protect against “accidents”. See they did their part to protect the enviroment, they “talked” about it.
But last, I agree with Tea-Party favorite Rand Paul. They have not indicated that they wont pay for the clean up. I mean, just look at Exxon and their history.
They paid. Of course they appealed, and appealed every ruling and judgement against them and finally found a libertarian judge who gave them a sweet heart deal. But they paid. It is not Exxons fault that in the 20 year that it took them to appeal, many of the fishermen men and others affected by the spill had died. They were just following their approrpiate legal avenues.
It is weeks like these that I am so happy that the conservatives on the Supreme court passed legislation recognizing that Corporations have “rights” like people.
Thank goodness for Conservatives and Libertarians.
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