Spill Fighters

June 15, 2010
Spillfighters is thrilled to see the news that came out of Destin Florida yesterday.  In what we hope to be the first of many such actions, the County Commissioners  of Okaloosa voted unanimously to protect the water, land, and livelihoods of the people of Destin, even if it means breaking the law.  Frustrated with the slow response from BP and the Feds, the county has put in place a local emergency management team that will handle planning and implementation on site.  $200,000 has already been allocated towards preventing the oil from reaching the Choctawhatchee Bay.

Spillfighters has been in touch with a representative of local business interests who may begin privately raising additional funds to further ensure that the pristine shores of Destin are not further marred by the so-far-unstoppable flow of crude oil.  We hope that other counties and parishes look towards Destin’s example and find their own ways to do what must be done, even if it violates current law. - spillfighter alert –

RED = Potential Beached Oil
See Full NOAA Map PDF File HERE

We are down in Louisiana and it is sickening and sad. It is clear that this is going to be worse than a ‘Category 10′ (if hurricanes rated that high). This is like having a hurricane stop on top of the coast and beat it and beat it and beat it day after day—with no end in sight. These people are strong and resilient, but this storm is not going to be over in a few days or even weeks like previous storms. AND even if the people survive, the marine life will not.

And this storm doesn’t just blow around the marine life—it targets them and it will win. What we see is the occassional pelican or seagull coated in oil and then rescued. These animals are at the ‘top of the food chain’. They are capable of surviving. The ‘bentos”, the layer at the bottom where the crabs and the smallest sea creatures is dead or dying fast. The most vulnerable and smallest (but most important) are not getting a bath at a rescue center, but are DYING FAST.

What does this mean? Its like having a ranch and killing all your grass—after your grass is dead, your larger animals soon follow.

History is about to repeat itself. So many waterways in the United States have already faced similar extinctions during which the sensitive and spectacular mix of native micro-plants, and marine subspecies have been wiped out in our inland rivers and lakes.

Want to know what has happened in almost all of them?

During the time when the environment is still toxic and ‘harsh’, a hardy species will move in and take over. Check out the many species of carp that have literally taken over the original game fish in many of our lakes and rivers. The bass and game fish that were plentiful are choked out and could not compete and repopulate.

This is crunch time—if we don’t act quickly, the speckled trout, the redfish, the oysters, shrimp and so many othe!r fantastically unique and bountiful species will be killed off and will not be able to overcome the harsh environment that foreign species could survive in. Once they are in, you don’t get rid of them and the only abundance of game fish will be in our memories.

So, we have to hurry and help nature (microbes) clean up this oil. Please contact your elected officials and ask them to ‘push’ for local funding of bioremediation (at least until BP chooses to use it). We need to get this out in front of this big red monster.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and as the result of other ‘disasters’ in the United States, the Government created what is called the NCP (National Contingency Plan). This document specifically spells out in the event of an ‘emergency’ such as an Oil Spill who is responsible for directing its clean up.

No one can really fault the Federal Government for not knowing how big a problem the provisions granting ‘authority to direct the clean up’ would be. The language in the NCP usually works. For example, a barge captain hits a rock, a spill ensues, the barge company/oil company calls in a team to contain and disperse the oil. No one is Washington is called out of an important meeting or required to do a bunch of paperwork. The Response Officer is usually the state’s EPA Secretary and if it is on a waterway, the Coast Guard is involved. This is very efficient and has worked very well up to this point.

Today, we have a company that has literally ‘thumbed its nose’ at the EPA (they did not budge when the EPA asked them to switch to a less toxic dispersant) and to date they have not moved fast enough to stop the leak or to use what all of you feel is the best method of removing the oil or at least making it less harmful (bioremediation).

Here’s the reason the Government really does not want to ever get involved in a spill and ‘direct’ the clean up efforts…once they take ‘responsiblity’ out of the hands of the barge company (or BP in this case) you preclude them from protecting themselves against further liability. They can argue that because someone else stepped in they were not given a chance to do even better. “So, Mr. President—just try and do it your way” says BP. If you do, we’ll scream that you interfered with our ability to protect ourselves and you’ll be picking up the multi-billion dollar tab for the clean up and all the claims from your citizens against us. So, we can use whatever method we want to either hide or clean up this mess—and there is nothing that you can do to stop us.

Hopefully, our Government will find some other ‘legal’ means of pushing BP to use bioremediation to clean up the spill—so far not even the local governments (which can preempt BP if they don’t feel that the company that caused their pollution is doing enough) are willing to stick their necks out for fear that they will be triggering a liability that is so large that only BP can shoulder it right now.

Have you seen how President Obama and the Parish Presidents from Louisana look like they all want to explode when they talk about the spill—now you know!

BIG NEWS: Recently, I was told by some very connected  bioremediation industry insiders that the oil industry has been using specific dispersants to ‘hide’ the extent of their oil spills for some time.

Sure it is becoming more and more widely known that disperstants ‘spread out’ the oil so it breaks down the oil to be ‘more readily absorbed’ by the environment,  but did you know that some say that COREXIT interacts with the oil to “remove” key ‘trace elements’…and this might not be to help the environment.

So what you ask? It seems that COREXIT actually removes the very trace elements that scientists and regulators look for when evaluating whether a seaturtle or dolphin washing up miles from a spill was actually killed by oil. If it was killed by the oil’s toxicity, but the tests come back negative, who would that benefit?

Why is this important? You wouldn’t really think this makes a big difference, except that it makes it difficult to find the users of dispersants responsible for the killing billions of sea creatures not just ‘coated with oil’.

An example was given of a particular oil spill in an inland bay that was treated by dispersants. The oil sank to the bottom and there was no trace of it onshore even after several days. All of the toxins may have been there, the fish and wildlife certainly were choking and dying, but it could not be directly traced back to the oil from the spill….

Note:  This info is second-hand so I need some help to verify that the dispersants actually do this—so if any of you have any information, please send it to info@spillfighters.com so we can verify the level of truth in this revelation)

In speaking with the best and brightest companies that provide bioremediation to spills such as this, I keep being told that BP met with many of them right after the spill. Very thoughtful on BPs part. Having a field rep see your products is not the same as having a senior VP in the room, but the fact is someone sent several reps on the road to evaluate bioremediation products and services that were available. So far, no contracts have been let and BP remains firmly against using this as a solution until the very end. Are they ‘bull-headed’ or ‘Cautious’?

So, to answer the NUMBER ONE QUESTION that practically every person asks—

WHY HASN’T BP STARTED USING THE ‘OIL EATING MICROBES’ ON THE OIL SPILL?

The number one answer given by the companies that have been sitting on the sidelines chomping at the bit to get started using bioremediation is:

BP wants the oil. Many scientist believe that the amount of oil that has been escaping is much higher than BP’s estimates. It could be as much as 5 times the ‘official’ estimate.

Members of the bioremediation community believe that the delay is because BP wishes to ‘harvest’ the oil that is being ‘driven’ to the bottom by the dispersants. It seems that by making the oil congregate at the bottom, we can’t visually see how large the spill is AND it will ‘pool’ in the deeper areas of the gulf so that it can be later ‘vacumed’ up by aparatus that can pump it to the surface. I hope not, as this would mean that we are killing the Gulf purely for greed—I think most of us can handle stupidity, but not greed.

If BP has handed out millions to the States and counties affected by the spill for clean up—but so far has not spent any money on bioremediation, is that Bull Headed or Cautious?

I want to thank all of you so much for helping with this push.  We ARE making progress.  I’ve been invited to speak on Fox News, MSNBC and several radio shows.   I will keep you posted when the shows air.   I’ve also been invited to come to Louisana to meet with several of the Bioremediation companies.

I never intended to step into the spotlight like this—but I did make a promise that I would talk to anyone about implementing this solution for our Gulf of Mexico (and it looks like now for our Atlantic Ocean)….so I will.

Thank you so much for everyone’s help.

Brent Tuttle

Good God, please wake me up from this nightmare.  Really, BP just agreed to fund a project to dredge up miles of sea bed and heap it up into walls so that it does not spread further oil into the marshes of Louisana.  And we have not funded the use of one single microbe for the spill.

Here is an excerpt from the article from CNN’s website.  The article is here.

In Louisana, where oily sludge has been fouling coastal marshes for two weeks, state officials said the White House has given its blessing to a plan to dredge up walls of sand offshore, and BP agreed to fund the $360 million construction cost.

U.S. officials raised concerns about the long-term environmental effects of what would effectively amount to building dozens of miles of new barrier islands off the state’s coast.

But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other officials had pushed for approval of the plan as a last-ditch effort to prevent further damage.