Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar toured the Gulf Coast this week and stopped off in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday to lay some boom, meet the people and and gather information — and to deliver President Obama’s message that the federal government is “on the job” and “will not rest” until the crisis is under control. The Colorado rancher also came to see for himself the beauty and significance of South Alabama’s coastal environment, now facing an imminent threat from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well — still spewing 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. He took a boat ride on Little Lagoon, and held a press conference on the banks of Gator Lake just before sunset. (A full story, photo essay and video will be posted in awhile, after some great endangered South Alabama shrimp and a little refreshment.)
DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. — The coast may not see a black tide washing up on Gulf of Mexico beaches and in the marshes for days, according to some experts, and then it will not be the black picture people remember from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound Alaska in 1989.
Instead, gobs of emulsified oil — perhaps best described as tar balls — will wash ashore in patches over the next several months, according to Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor analyzing oil spill data for the federal response team.
“There is not a black tide out there. At Exxon Valdez, there was a black tide that washed onto the shore. It was a god-awful mess,” Overton said. “That was oil flowing out of the ship right onto shore. This is a completely different case,” he told an environmental reporter for the Mobile Press-Register.
We are reassessing the situation and our location today and may be pulling up stakes and heading toward Louisiana, or Florida, later today. As always, we’ll post something as soon as we know it.
Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidate to replace Bob Riley as governor of Alabama said Tuesday he’s having “second thoughts” about his support for offshore drilling, according to a Decatur newspaper.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
