BP Follow the Money
Rick Kalke and Sandra Arismendez taking subsamples of deepwater cores from the bottom adjacent to the Deepwater Horizon spill site. The samples will be tested for presence of oil and for toxicity. Photo courtesty of Harte Research Institute.
Where the funds for the recovery and clean up of the Gulf are coming from …
By now, everyone knows about the claim process for business folk damaged by the oil spill. And about the $20 billion BP set aside to pay those claims. But there’s more going on in terms of money, some of which we can still influence.
The EPA will eventually levy fines against the company or companies they find to have caused the spill, which could be a huge amount of money. Where will that money go? Since it was the Gulf Coast that was damaged, common sense says the fine money should be used to help the Gulf Coast recover. Unfortunately, the money isn’t earmarked to remain for use just on the Gulf Coast, so the U.S. Government could spend it anywhere. To keep that money for Gulf Coast recovery will require a large push by the general public. Help from local U.S. Representatives and Senators will be necessary. If pressure isn’t put on the Federal Government to keep the money here, look for it to go into the general Federal budget, which means the money will be spent all over the country.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is in charge of evaluating the damage caused by the spill and restoring damaged areas. NOAA does this under the Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP), which was created after the Exxon Valdez spill to put in place a program to respond to oil spills along our coasts. After initial cleanup, the DARRP program initiates a National Resource Damage Assessment, known as NRDA. The NDRA determines what needs to be done to restore the environment, such as replanting wetlands, and how much it will cost. The evaluation process could take up to ten years. During the evaluation, state and federal agencies, who act as Trustees for DARRP, will seek public input as to what needs to be done to complete the restoration. Keep your eye out for public meetings if you’d like to have some input. After the cost of restoration is determined the violator is charged for cost. NOAA’s website says the violator is often a “key participant” in the restoration process. Significant oversight will be needed if the violator is the “key participant” in the restoration project, since it isn’t in the violator’s monetary interest to spend any more than it has to to get by.
Keep in mind the fine from the EPA is completely separate from the charges under NRDA. And both programs are completely separate from the claims process used by businesses to collect damage for lost profits.
BP Funding Gulf Research
Dr. Sylvia Earle will lead an National GeographicHRI January 2011 expedition to assess deep coral communities that may have been affected by the Gulf oil spill. Dr. Tom Shirley of HRI (pictured) will act as chief scientist on the expedition. Look for an article on the expedition's findings in the April issue of Gulfscapes. Photo Credit â Living Ocean Society.
British Petroleum has pledge $500 million to fund independent research on the Gulf of Mexico and the oil spills effects. The money will be doled out $50 million per year for the next ten years. To be considered for the research grants, scientists will submit proposals, with the winners being selected through a process that purportedly will be free of major influence from BP.
Dr. Larry McKinney, Executive Director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, says BP has consulted with scientists in the area to set up a selection process. The Harte Research Institute is helping to devise the evaluation system to be used in selecting the recipients. Concern over BP’s influence on the research is natural, but is being addressed. The only conditions set by BP appear to be that any research be peer reviewed (the regular process in which scholarly research is subjected to review and correction by scientific experts in the field before the research is printed), and that during the first three years the research must be about the oil spill, its effects, or ways to prevent future spills. There is no limitation on the focus of the research for the remaining seven years.
“The Gulf has traditionally been underfunded in terms of research,” said Dr. McKinney, who added that these grants “will set the research agenda for the Gulf for the next ten years.”
Categories: BP, NOAA Tags: bp, coast, gulf, Gulf Coast States, noaa, research, scientific
Harte Research Institute
The Hart Research Institute. Photo courtesy of Texas A & M - Corpus Christi.
The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi to Evaluate the Gulf
In 2000, Texas A&M University -Corpus Christi took a giant step forward as a research university. Until then, the University had existed quietly on a small island on the edge of Corpus Christi Bay, offering gorgeous waterfront views and its own beach. But Mr. Edward H. Harte changed all that in an instant. That year Mr. Harte, former owner of the local newspaper and noted philanthropist, donated $46 million dollars to establish a new Gulf of Mexico research institute, the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI). The gift established endowed research chairs, endowed graduate research fellowships and an endowed operating budget. Current University President Flavius C. Killebrew says the endowment “transformed the University into a major research institution.”
Mr. Harte became inspired to make this gift after reading Dr. Sylvia Earle’s book, Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans. Dr. Earle is a world-renowned marine biologist, ocean explorer, author and lecturer. She was the first woman to serve as NOAA’s Chief Scientist and is now an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. After meeting with Mr. Harte and University officials, Dr. Earle agreed to become the chairwoman of the Institute’s Advisory Council, bringing instant world-class credibility to the fledgling organization.
“Make a difference!” That was Mr. Harte’s admonishment to the new institute. To realize that directive, a different organizational model was established. According to Dr. Larry McKinney, who became Executive Director of HRI in the spring of 2008, “The primary distinction between HRI and other marine institutions is that our focus is on what is done with the science, rather than just the science itself.” The Harte Model created a link between the science world and the Gulf community at large, with two of its six endowed chairs being in non-marine science disciplines. The four marine science chairs are: Coastal and Marine Geospatial Sciences; Ecosystems and Modeling; Biodiversity and Conservation; and Ocean Health. The other two chairs are: Marine Policy and Law; and Socio-Economics. The later two chairs attempt to bridge the gap between scientific research and how it is used for economic, social and ecological benefit.
The HRI was thrust into the national spotlight by the Deepwater oil spill. “We didn’t realize until we all sat down to discuss the spill that every endowed chair had previous oil spill experience. And Dr. Earle led the oil spill response after the Gulf War,” said Dr. McKinney, who previously led oil spill responses for the State of Texas before coming to the HRI.
HRI scientists were asked to assist in mapping the oil spill after government scientists became overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster. And Dr. Paul Montagna, the endowed chair of Ecosystems & Modeling is still getting samples daily from the Gulf bottom to check for oil to see where and how much oil was deposited on the ocean floor. The HRI has also been asked to establish criteria for selecting research grants to be awarded from a $500 million fund established by BP, which will lend credibility to the process since the HRI chairs all agreed early on not to accept any work as expert witnesses in the coming lawsuits over the spill. Such expert witness jobs could easily double a scientist’s salary, but it could also create bias in favor of the party that hired them. This is a nice glimmer of integrity in a very corrupt looking situation.
The focus of the HRI doesn’t stop at the U.S. maritime boundry. As Dr. Killebrew puts it, “Fish don’t know national boundries.” And the Gulf of Mexico borders two other nations. So the HRI has helped coordinate Gulf policy and research with both Mexico and Cuba. And the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, a partnership between all five Gulf Coast states, was formed during an RHI conference in 2005. That Alliance helps coordinate the states’ plans aimed at improving the health of the Gulf.
By its actions in addressing and evaluating the oil spill, by its numerous other research projects, and by helping to coordinate the actions of the governments that border the Gulf of Mexico, the HRI has, and will continue to, “Make a difference.”
Coastal Update
The Health of the Gulf of Mexico after Deepwater Horizon
The millions of gallons of oil have stopped spewing into the Gulf daily. The seas are no longer aflame with burning oil. The beaches aren’t coated in Louisiana Light Sweet Crude.
Now what? What else is going to happen? Is their more oil coming ashore? Are the swamps devastated? Did the oil kill all our fish?
And where do we go to get answers to these questions? To South Texas, home of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. The HRI was founded in 2000 and its sole purpose is to study the Gulf. Not the Atlantic, not the Pacific, just the Gulf.
During the months of intense media coverage, you probably saw the HRI’s Executive Director, Dr. Larry McKinney, on TV during one of his many interviews. Dr. McKinney was, and is, one of the go-to guys for answers about the oil spill. He was kind enough to sit down for a few hours and discuss the oil spill in depth to help answer our many questions. We’ve attempted to distill the answers, some of which are complex, down into short, non-technical explanations.
The Beaches: The most visible of damage occurred when oil started washing up on the beaches. That shouldn’t happen again, says Dr. McKinney. The only oil that could come ashore would be old deposits left offshore, and only if they are upset by a big storm. More oil would have washed ashore had it not been for the combination of the depth of the blowout (5000 feet below the surface) and the application of dispersant. These two factors kept a lot of the oil from reaching the surface. The oil that did manage to make it to the surface was the subject of burning campaigns and more dispersant. Dr. McKinney notes that clean-up of the beaches is a lot easier and effective than cleaning marshland.
One lasting reminder of the spill will be the presence of tar balls on our beaches for the next few years. These look like small pieces of asphalt and wash ashore regularly. There will just be a lot more of them in the future. The good news is they aren’t toxic. Only messy. If you step on them, tar sticks to your feet and you can track the tar into your house, where it’s hard to get off your carpet or flooring.
The Marshes: Because a large amount of the oil never made it ashore, the impact on marshes wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. According to Dr. McKinney, “Marshes are next to impossible to clean up. Getting personnel and machinery into the wetlands to clean them can cause as much damage as the oil itself. Fortunately, the surface oil didn’t get pushed into the middle of the wetlands. It only coated the edges. If it had gotten deeper, it would have been catastrophic.” He expects to see damage to plants during the upcoming growing season, but they should recover in the next couple of years.
The Ocean Bottom: This is where we enter the unknown zone. There has never been such a blowout at this depth. Dispersants have never been used in such quantities at such depth, either. There isn’t much guidance on how the dispersed oil will behave. Dr. McKinney compares the blowout to a can of spray paint. The oil coming out was under pressure and mixed with about 40% methane gas. This spewing effect caused a lot of the oil to be broken down into small droplets. These small droplets became suspended in the seawater. Dispersants caused these droplets to be even smaller. Because the spill was so deep, there’s a lot of oil suspended far below the surface. This suspended oil makes up the “plumes” that were found, some of which were as deep as 3000 feet. They cover a huge area. How much of the oil will precipitate out of the plumes is unknown. It’s also unknown how much non-dispersed oil eventually settled onto the ocean floor.
Bottom samples taken to date show oil in some places but not in others. Dr. McKinney says these results aren’t contradictory. “The Gulf is a damn big place. There can be oil on the bottom in some areas, and not in others,” he said. Preliminary results from The Florida Institute of Oceanography found a thick layer of oil in sediment in DeSoto Canyon, off Pensacola, and Penn State researchers found damage to some deep sea corals several miles from the well site. On the other hand, “Some preliminary work was done a few weeks ago when a submersible went down to some of the deepwater coral communities in areas adjacent to the spill, and they seemed to be OK,” Dr. McKinney relayed. Many more tests of the seafloor are planned in the next few months, and it will take quite some time before we know the extent of damage.
Fish and Marine Life: First and foremost, Gulf seafood is safe to eat. Dr. McKinney says, “I have never seen so much testing and the industry itself is taking more care than ever to make sure of that. I guess the best test is that I eat seafood of some sort every week and have done so wherever I have traveled around the Gulf.”
As for the effect of the spill on Gulf marine life, we can estimate the impact on shallow water species by looking at a prior Gulf offshore well blowout. In 1979, the IXTOC I oil well in the southern Gulf, off Mexico, blew out, spilling huge amounts of oil into the ocean for over 9 months. Large amounts of dispersants were used then, also. The predominate commercial sea life in that area, shrimp and squid, saw a drop in their populations of 60% for the two years following the spill. Their numbers returned to close to normal in the third year. Dr. McKinney expects to see a similar effect on marine life in the area of the Deepwater Horizon spill. The unaffected waters surrounding the spill may be productive enough to compensate for that but we will have to wait and see.
IXTOC I was only in 160 feet of water, so the effect on deepwater species is unknown. The Deep Scattering Layer is an area underwater that is home to marine animals so numerous that sonar bounces off them and gives a false reading suggesting it is the bottom of the ocean. This layer rises and falls daily with the sunlight, rising as close as 500 feet below the surface, and falling as deep as 4000 feet. Whale sharks, the largest fish, and sperm whales eat in this layer, which is very important for a variety of sea life. Dr. McKinney says we really have no idea of the extent of damage to this layer. If whale sharks were affected, it would be hard to know, since they don’t float when they die; they fall to the ocean floor instead, where we wouldn’t notice them.
Dr. McKinney is also worried about the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, which he describes as the “canary in the coal mine” for the Gulf. These tuna are important commercial fish but are already overfished and their populations dwindling. Unfortunately, they breed in only two places. One is in the Mediterranean, and the other is in the Gulf, in the Deepwater Horizon area. And they started their breeding season about the same time as the Deepwater Horizon blew out. Talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time. We’ll have to wait till spring, when they return to that area to spawn, to see how they were affected.
We’ll also have to wait till spring to see the effect on other fish species, since most spawn in the spring. One ray of hope that Dr. McKinney holds out is the effect of the fishing ban, which closed large portions of the Gulf to fishermen for months. “From a fisheries standpoint on snapper, redfish and trout, because of the closures we got a good break from fishing pressure. And what damage (the oil) may have caused in lost eggs and larva production, because so many more adults survived fishing season, they may reproduce so much next year that we’ll have a huge crop. That’s a real possibility.”
Another positive, so far, is the lack of new “dead zones”. Due to runoff from the Mississippi River, each year there is a “dead zone” in the Gulf off the mouth of the river that is lacking oxygen. This lack of oxygen means the water can’t support normal sea life. One big fear was the oil plumes would create new “dead zones”. There are naturally occurring oil seeps in the Gulf which put about 2 million gallons of oil into the Gulf each year. Microbes in the water actually feed on this oil and break it down, but they consume lots of oxygen when they do. Scientists feared that the plumes of oil would be attacked by these microbes, who in turn would consume the oil and use large amounts of oxygen. Samples from the plumes have shown the presence of these microbes, and a reduction in oxygen content, but not to really low levels. The decrease in oxygen was much less than expected and isn’t toxic. Why? Dr. McKinney thinks it may be due to dispersants causing the oil to spread out over a large area, in effect diluting the oil concentration and therefore the concentration of microbes. “You can make a case, and we’ll find out if it is true or not, that the use of the dispersants in the deep water . . . may have made the oil droplets even smaller and as they dispersed into those plumes they were so small and so dispersed, that the oxygen depletion didn’t occur as much as it might have. The EPA may have made the perfect call,” he said.
Conclusion: So there you have it. Probably no more oil on the beach, but tar balls. Danger for tuna. Fewer marine life in the area surrounding the spill. Possible effect on snapper, redfish and trout, but it may be offset due to the fishing bans. Some damage to marshes, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Questions remain about damage to the sea floor, the Deep Scattering Layer, and the animals that live there. More answers should be available after this spring. Stay tuned.
