Hurricane Season?s Approach Raises Concerns about Buried Oil

Every year, people who live along the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico prepare themselves mentally and physically for the approach of hurricane season. For as long as anybody can remember, the end of summer has brought battering storms that can flood marshes and wetlands, bringing storm surges that batter the shore and challenge power lines, levees and low-lying areas. But since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, the normal concerns about having enough fresh water to drink and batteries and flashlights on hand for when the power goes out have been exacerbated by worries about what the coming storms may drive up from the ocean?s bottom. When the BP oil spill occurred in April of 2010, it poured millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and that oil spread from as far west as the shores of the state of Texas to as far east as the Florida Keys. Concerns about the oil led BP and the EPA to allow the use of Corexit, a powerful chemical dispersant that successfully broke up many of the oil slicks that were floating on the ocean?s surface, but left at least a million gallons of dispersed oil merged with toxic chemicals lying at the bottom of the ocean. The concerns about the impact of the oil lying still there a mile down below the surface have been strident; the coming of storms strong enough to churn the waters and bring those toxic substances back up to the surface are bringing near panic to residents who have already been through the ringer far too many times.

The BP Oil Company has worked hard to calm these fears, saying that it is unlikely that a hurricane would be able to stir up anything from the depths of the ocean, and pointing out that if any tar balls or tar mats appear on beaches they are prepared to come and clean them up, as they have done in the past. The access to that kind of clean-up effort is reassuring to a degree, but for residents of the Gulf who are already concerned about chemical exposure from two years ago, the idea that any storm might revisit that exposure on them is enough to cause serious concern. Scientists have mixed opinions as to whether a powerful storm could raise debris from the ocean?s bottom, but confirm that a storm surge into the low-lying wetlands that still hold residual oil would probably raise crude and chemicals that are settled in the marshes.

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Source: http://www.bpclaims.us/hurricane-seasons-approach-raises-concerns-about-buried-oil/

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