Thousands of gallons of oil spilled in Mississippi River

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Thousands of gallons of oil spilled in Mississippi River
Bruce Schreiner and Adrian Sainz, Associated Press
Updated 10:15 pm, Thursday, September 3, 2015

COLUMBUS, Ky. (AP) — Part of the Mississippi River was closed as crews investigated an oil spill caused by the collision of two tow boats, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.

The collision Wednesday evening near Columbus, Kentucky, damaged at least one barge carrying clarified slurry oil. The cargo tank was ruptured, causing thousands of gallons of oil to spill into the river, the Coast Guard said.

. . .

The barge was carrying approximately 1 million gallons, but the breach was only in one area, affecting just one of its six tanks, Ratliff said. That tank holds 250,000 gallons, and Lt. Takila Powell said a little more than 120,000 gallons spilled into the river.

The Coast Guard said it was working with the barge owner, Inland Marine Services, and an oil spill response organization. Inland Marine Services referred calls to its public relations person, Patrick Crowley, who did not return repeated calls seeking comment.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Part-of-Mississippi-River-closes-2-boats-6483202.php

[Mnemosyne]

1. Wow, what luck, only 120,000 gals spilled! Whew, had me worried for a moment. nt

[Geronimoe]

2. Dead Zone

Why bother to clean it up? The Mississippi is a dead river that drains into the dead zone of the Gulf. Why waste money building the XL Keystone Pipeline, just dump the slurry into the Mississippi River and capture it in New Orleans for export to China.

[ShrimpPoboy]

5. And fund the operation

with oil money from Iraq. What could go wrong?

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

6. I'm sure the folks with expensive riverside lots will be really happy with your plan!

[Fairgo]

3. How do you close a river

May as well try to catch the wind.

[Divernan]

4. 24 hrs. later;still no sign of "large cleanup operation"

The facts of this story indicate FUBAR from start to finish. First of all there were FIVE barges involved in the collision. No surprise there, since a barge takes several miles to slow down to a stop (based on info I got when I took a river rescue Coast Guard class).

The oil is described as heavy, and will eventually sink to the bottom. What we have learned from spills of other heavy oils, is that once they sink into the bottom of a body of water, they are basically impossible to clean up. But they are in place to poison the food chain of aquatic life.

So from the time the collision occurred, heavy oil was traveling down stream, but the only containment activities were around the vessel to try to stop further oil spill.

And I'm here to tell you, based on previous spills from fracking operations and leaks into waterways, the oversight authorities like the DEP, EPA, Coast Guard, rely on the owners/operators for an estimate of spillage. Those estimates are always extremely low, sometimes by a factor of 10.

In this incident the owner tells the Coast Guard only one of six tanks leaked, but witnesses report a "long gash was apparent" along the side of one barge. No report of divers examining the vessel below the water line to see if other tanks were breached, or the Coast Guard examining a diagram of the vessel vis a vis the "long gash" to verify which tanks were breached.

The Coast Guard determined five barges were damaged in the collision. . . The collision Wednesday evening near Columbus, Kentucky,
By Thursday evening, there was no sign of a large cleanup operation.

Powell said the oil is thick and has to be heated to be transferred or moved."How this type of product typically would react is that when it reaches the water that is of a lower temperature, it would solidify and sink," she said Thursday. "But one of the things that we will be doing tomorrow is trying to determine where that oil has migrated to, to try to determine whether or not it has moved down the river or if it's still in the vicinity of where the collision occurred."