Any oil that would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean is out of sight—but officials shouldn’t put it out of mind.
Source: A Struggle to Check the Seafloor Around California’s Oil Spill – Pacific Standard
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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
This blog describes my reflections, new knowledge, and inspirations that developed out of my research on my family’s immigration and acculturation experiences.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Intensity of beach oiling plus our monitoring beaches.
As the clean-up progresses, so does our monitoring. We now have sampled an array of sites that span the region of potential impact (Gaviota to downtown Santa Barbara) and the range of observed intensity of oiling. We are now beginning to shift gears a bit to have some of our crew focus on our other assessment efforts (beach visitation rates, our robotic data collection assessment tools, etc.).
Light oiling at Bacara Beach on May 26, 2105.
Confirming our initial observations from the very beginning of this spill, much of the oiling and obvious impact has been concentrated in and around Refugio State Beach. Today Unified Command reported 7.4 km (4.6 mi) of beach have been heavily oiled (red in the above map) and 14.3 km (8.9 mi) of beach lightly oiled (orange, yellow, and green in the above map).
Our table below lists the data available from Unified Command as of the Wednesday. We have observed a small amount of dead fish, an unusual concentration of dead sand crabs (Emerita analog) and several oiled brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis, which may or may not be included in the reported totals below) over the past week. Most of the marine mammals recovered to date have been California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) and northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), generally in poor condition independent of the spill/oiling. Most of the oiled birds have been brown pelicans.
Northern elephant seal juvenile at El Capitan State Beach on the morning of May 20, 2015 prior to the first oil arriving to this beach.
Bacara Beach fishing closure sign due to Refugio Oil Spill.
A fishing closure is in effect until further notice. The aerial exclusion zone (below a 1000′ ceiling) now in effect is slated to terminate Friday, May 29.
| Oiled Beach | |
| Heavily Oiled | 7.4 km |
| Lightly Oiled | 14.3 km |
| Birds | |
| oiled | 33 |
| dead | 16 |
| Marine Mammals | |
| oiled | 18 |
| dead | 9 |
| Oil Recovered | |
| oily water mix | 38080 l |
| oily vegetation | 310 yd 3 |
| oily sand | 760 yd 3 |
| oiled protective equip | 141 yd 3 |
| oiled soil | 2610 yd 3 |
| boom deployed | 0.68 km |
| hard bottom | 0.56 km |
| absorbent (floating) | 1.24 km |
| Assets | |
| personnel | 956 |
| vessels | 16 |
| shoreline teams | 5 |
| hellicopters | 2 |
Sampling Coal Oil Point on May 22, 2015 (click to see a quick video of our sampling area.)
Yet another test
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Oil exclusion boom at Gaviota State Beach on May 24, 2015.
Oil exclusion boom at Gaviota State Beach on May 24, 2015.
Only lightly oiled Campus Point Beach on May 22, 2015.
Federal authorities on Wednesday issued a cleanup order to the company whose underground pipeline last week spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean and marred several miles of Santa Barbara County coastline.
“Our action today is to make sure the oil response work continues until the Santa Barbara County coastline is restored,” Jared Blumenfeld, administrator for the U.S. EPA’s Pacific Southwest region, said in a news release.
The order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard requires Plains All American Pipeline, which owns and operates the pipeline, to continue its cleanup work on land, on the beach and in the ocean. It further orders the company to clean up all remaining contamination and to contain the oil to ensure no more crude is released into the environment.
The order also establishes time lines and cleanup requirements under the federal Clean Water Act. Federal officials say the move will ensure a prompt and thorough restoration of ocean waters and shoreline fouled by the May 19 spill near Refugio State Beach.
By June 6, the company must submit a work plan and detail how it will sample the air, water, rocks and soil, the order says.
The action comes as an ongoing cleanup operation has swelled to nearly 1,000 people, including federal and state employees, environmental contractors hired by Plains and trained volunteers.
Plains on Wednesday also continued a slow-moving excavation of the soil around the section of pipe that broke, action required under a separate order issued Friday by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. That order forces the company to remove the portion of pipeline for testing to determine what caused the spill and the condition of the pipe when it failed.
The latest order comes two days after Plains said it will also investigate the integrity of pipeline at four other locations along Line 901. The pipe transports crude oil 11 miles from Floras to Gaviota and then to refineries throughout Southern California.
The spill released as much as 101,000 gallons of crude from the pipeline, according to the company. An estimated 21,000 gallons of oil flowed downhill from the spill site through a culvert and into the Pacific.
Source: Feds order pipeline company to clean up Santa Barbara coastline – LA Times
Investors are starting to take note as well and the industry is starting a strong pushback against the LA Times story. See this story from the Houston Business Journal:
Plains All American Pipeline LP has had to defend its safety record to a public concerned with the environmental impacts of its oil spill resulting from a pipeline rupture off the coast of California, but investors are watching too.
The price per share of Plains All American LP (NYSE: PAA) stock has slipped ever since the fiasco began, but up until now, much of that trading can be attributed to retail investors who tend to be more reactionary and a bit less sophisticated, said Sunil Sibal, director and master limited partnership analyst at New Orleans-based Global Hunter Securities LLC.
Safety records matter in that they can indicate more intrinsic problems than any isolated incident, but Sibal is fairly confident of Plains’ capabilities.
There was much media fanfare over the fact that Plains’ ranked fifth in the number of incidents or infractions reported to thePipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, which has a database of roughly 1,700 pipeline operators, the LA Times reported.
Plains spokesman Patrick Hodgins has since come out and defended its record to media by reiterating that Plains is one of the largest midstream operators in the nation, and operates substantially more pipeline than many other companies in the PHMSA database.
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