Coastal Scuttlebutt: July Daily Miniposts (continued)…

in Coastal Scuttlebutt by Admin — July 16, 2010 at 6:00 am | 9 comments

July 29

Is the oil impact on Louisiana marshes being overblown?

Seven days ago on July 22 I was a guest of the Gulf Restoration Network (GRN) on a six-hour boat tour of the Barataria Basin to view the impacts of the Deep Horizon well blowout. Another guest was Mike Grunwald, formerly a reporter at the Washington Post, who now writes for Time Magazine.

Grunwald posted a summary of his visit to Louisiana in today’s Time.com, in which he downplayed the impacts of BP oil on Louisiana marshes. He based his conclusions both on tours of the coast and on conversations with noted authorities, including Jacqui Michel, Paul Kemp, Gene Turner and Ivor van Heerden.

In addition to marsh plant resilience, here’s a hopeful anecdotal account from the eighties about oil effects on marsh fauna from a former colleague Walt Sikora:

Many years ago now, my wife and I were asked by the late Dr. William Patrick’s lab (LSU Laboratory of Flooded Soils and Sediments) to take a few benthic samples in a marsh near a Shell pipe line pumping station that was subjected to a brief oil spill from a burst pipe.  As I recall there were quite a few acres of brown, dead marsh grass. To our surprise, our benthic samples were not devoid of life but still had quite a few macrobenthic organisms such as oligochaete worms and nematode worms.  We turned in our results and never heard anything more about it.

Grunwald’s conclusions about modest oil impacts on coastal marshes contrast sharply with the discussion on that subject among members of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) at their July meeting yesterday at the State Capitol. CPRA chairman Garret Graves reported progress in the construction of the highly controversial sand barrier experiment to protect Louisiana marshes from potential impacts of about two million barrels (bbls) of oil that he estimated is still floating around in the gulf.

I strongly doubt the latter estimate and I think the ongoing threat of residual oil is being hyped by state officials, especially in comparison to the governor’s sand berms, which I believe pose a greater threat to the coast than whatever oil remains ‘at large.’ From April 20 when the platform exploded until July 15 when the well was capped it has been estimated that roughly six million bbls were released (96 days x 60,000 bbls/day). Of this total volume a significant quantity has been either recovered directly from the wellhead or skimmed or burned at the surface. Considerably more has either evaporated during the summer heat or decomposed into CO2 by voracious bacteria.

Thus I strongly doubt that one third of the total volume of oil released is still floating around. The July 28 program  All Things Considered on NPR carried an account by Jamie Tarabay of an aerial survey of the coast in which she participated on July 27. Her overflight included the area we had examined at sea level five days before. The bottom line of Tarabay’s report was that there has been a striking reduction in the amount of oil visible from the air since her previous visit two months previously. The dramatic improvement in the appearance of the estuarine waters of the Mississippi delta belies ‘sky is still falling’ statements by state and parish officials.

On the subject of estimating the coastal impacts of oil from the Deep Horizon well blowout, Mark Schleifstein wrote an article in today’s The Times-Picayune, about an extensive discussion at yesterday’s CPRA meeting on the cumbersome and lengthy process known as the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). This process is supposed to quantify in dollar terms the environmental damage caused by the accident.

From what I heard at the meeting and read in Schleifstein’s piece, the NRDA process will take many years and unfortunately not generate funding that could be invested proactively. Instead, whatever net compensation funding is ultimately forthcoming will only pay for historic damage and not steer coastal policy in a sustainable direction.

NGOs propose investing BP funds proactively

Chris Kirkham wrote a story for today’s The Times-Picayune about a proposal by The National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Audubon Society to turn the BP lemons into lemonade. These prominent non government organizations (NGOs) propose establishing a $5 billion escrow fund from BP to jumpstart major unfunded coastal projects.

July 28

CPRA holds its July meeting today

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) will meet today at the State Capitol House Committee Room 5, beginning at 9:30 AM. The agenda is as follows:

I. Call to Order

II. Roll Call

III. Approval of Agenda

IV. Old Business

V. Oil Spill Update- Garret Graves, Chairman

VI. Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA)

Process (Representatives from LOSCO, DEQ, LDWF and OCPR) a. Overview of Process; b. Structure of State Trustees; c. Injuries and Injury Assessment; d. Cooperative Process; e. Other Types of Claims

VII. Approval of TLCD Mitigation for MTG Reach H

VIII. Public Comments

First do no harm!

Elizabeth Shogren with NPR reported on Morning Edition today that experts, including Jacqui Michel, say that efforts to remove oil from marshes may be doing more harm than good.

Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday by Swede White on WRKF-FM that a new oil spill occurred in the Barataria Basin west of Plaquemines Parish, caused by a towing vessel colliding with an oil well.

Dragonfly distraction

Click on this link to read an interesting article by Bob Thomas at Loyola University from his ongoing series Nature Notes on summer dragonfly swarms in south Louisiana. Email Bob if you’d like to be added to those who automatically receive these periodic reminders of the diversity of the Mississippi River delta and the plants, fungi and critters with whom we share the ooast.

July 27

Ben Sandmel wrote a post published yesterday in Politicsdaily.com about the wisdom of the state allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for sand berms to stave off oil from the Deepwater Horizon well blowout. Sandmel focused on my (Len Bahr’s) arguments against the berms and my unabashedly preaux-science views on the subject.

On July 24 Keith Magill, executive editor of the Houma Courier and Daily Comet, wrote an opinion column in which he challenged the official state policy of using rocks and ‘sand castles’ to protect marshes from oil. I’d love to see the editorial executives of The Advocate and The Times-Picayune follow suit – siding with coastal science rather than popularity.

July 26

Quantitative assessment of oiled marshes

David A. Farenthold wrote a story published in today’s Washington Post about the impacts of oil on oyster grass (Spartina alterniflora) and wire grass (S. patens) the primary salt and brackish marsh grasses that bind the soils along the southern fringe of the Louisiana coast. The story reports that about 200 square miles of the coast have been oiled, of which the major – but unspecified – portion is marsh.

This compares to about 30 square miles of salt and brackish marshes that turned brown exactly ten years ago during the all-time record drought incident of 2000.  On that occasion I commissioned Greg Linscombe, then a senior staffer at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, to carry out helicopter-based quantitative brown marsh surveys for the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities.

As soon as the Deep Horizon well flow is permanently killed I strongly urge Governor Jindal’s coastal advisor Garret Graves to arrange for Mr. Linscombe to design and implement a similar survey of oiled coastal marshes, with a follow-up assay next Spring. The extent of marsh oiling and recovery should be quantified objectively and not just estimated.

BP and hired guns from the research community

According to a July 24 AP article by Ramit Plushnick-Masti and Noaki Schwartz that was posted in HuffingtonPost, BP is offering lucrative contracts to gulf coast scientists, with three year strings on data sharing.

This practice reflects the absence of coastal scientists in the design of state responses to the oil blowout, which was recently described here. The article illustrates a wide range of opinion on this practice. Among those quoted are Chris D’Elia, Dean of the LSU School of the Coast and Environment, and Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane Law School.

July 25

Sand berms and science vacuum still newsworthy

Fred Grimm wrote a column published in The Miami Herald on the dominance of politics over science in Louisiana’s response to the BP blowout. The article cites the letter to Admiral Thad Allen by Professor Rob Young and a number of other notable coastal authorities, objecting to geo-engineering without scientific ‘adult supervision.’ The letter was the subject of this post, published yesterday.

Oil giants form oil blowout response partnership

Yesterday’s The Times-Picayune carried an editorial on the formation of a corporate partnership of the four largest oil companies other than BP doing business in the Gulf of Mexico. This coalition (ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp., Conoco Phillips and Shell Oil) has bankrolled $1 billion company (Marine Well Containment Company) that would respond aggressively to any future release of oil from deepwater well sites.

Oil isn’t our only problem

Today’s The Times-Picayune carries an editorial praising the Obama administration ocean policy commission that has embarked on a plan to streamline and coordinate coastal protection and restoration, specifically in the gulf zone from Florida to Texas. I was heartened to see that the editorial called attention to gulf hypoxia as well as oil pollution and land loss in south Louisiana. This issue has been ignored by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) which meets at the State Capitol on Wednesday, July 28.

Ann Zimmerman wrote an article published on July 23 in The Wall Street Journal about creative ideas for absorbing oil that have been submitted to BP by entrepreneurs around the world.

Bye-bye Bonnie!

This morning I saw a TV ad in which BP claims to have successfully removed by skimming 27 million gallons, or ~0.6 million barrels (bbls) of oil to date and millions more by other methods. This amounts to let’s say 20% of the estimated 3.3 million (plus or minus 1.1 million) bbls of oil released into the waters of the gulf since April 20. A large but unknown portion of the total oil has evaporated and another significant but unknown portion has been weathered and decomposed by floating microbes.

Yesterday I was asked about my thoughts on the effects of the (thankfully weakened) tropical disturbance Bonnie on the residual oil still floating around the Mississippi River delta. I responded that, except for the weather-induced cessation (moratorium) on recovery activities, the net effects should be positive in adding oxygen, breaking up clumps of oil and tar and helping to speed the microbial petroleum decomposition.

The seventh largest delta in the world expanded into the Gulf of Mexico in the face of a barrage of numberless hurricanes and lesser storms over the past seven millennia. Ocean storms are a normal and beneficial part of deltaic existence. They ‘stir the estuarine pot,’ providing rejuvenating mixing and aeration. Only people and property are harmed by gulf storms.

July 24

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea

The trajectory of weakened and disorganized TS Bonnie suggests landfall in Louisiana sometime tonight east of the Mississippi River. This is good news in terms of limited surge energy and minimal impetus to push oil into marshes. Governor Jindal should be pleased that the state’s puny efforts underway to block oil with sand berms may even survive this event.

Gulf oil release nothing new

Today’s Washington Post carries an article by Steven Mufson challenging the widespread notion that accidental releases of oil are rare in the Gulf of Mexico. Mufson documents a cumulative record of gulf oil pollution from 1964 to 2009 equal to the Exxon Valdez. I was intrigued to see a quote from Professor Bob Bea, UC Berkeley engineer who’s especially notable locally for his forensic work on the Katrina levee failure in New Orleans. Dr.Bea has a long and distinguished record on the forefront of the technology of deepwater oil and gas production. If I were the president I would add Bob to the seven-member Graham-Reilly BP Oil Commission.

An article in HuffingtonPost on the impacts of Bonnie on the BP cleanup efforts says that from 94 to 184 million gallons of oil had been released before the wellhead was capped last week. This is equal to from 2.2 to 4.4 million barrels, or from 9 to 18% of the 24 million barrel capacity of the New Orleans Superdome. Churning waters from Bonnie may significantly help weatherize and reduce the volume of residual (unrecovered) oil that still threatens our coast.

Lest we forget: ACC hasn’t gone away

The implications of the decision by US Senate majority leader Harry Reid to give up on debate over serious climate change legislation is the subject of this sobering piece in HuffingtonPost. The American public is being very poorly served by senators who persist in denying the reality of global warming and climate change.

July 23

HEEERE’S BONNIE!!!

Louisiana state climatologist Barry Keim reported this morning on WRKF 89.3 FM, during NPR’s Morning Edition, that either Tropical Storm Bonnie or low level Hurricane Bonnie will likely pass over the Macondo well site, and make landfall in the most vulnerable part of the Mississppi River delta. This could blow residual oil floating at the surface of the gulf into Lake Pontchartrain and possibly into Lake Maurepas.

BP blowout responders respond to Bonnie

In today’s The Advocate Sandy Davis described the measures underway to evacuate 2,000 oil response workers from the path of what is expected to be a fast moving tropical storm or minimal Hurricane Bonnie, arriving sometime Sunday.

Bonnie’s effects on the Bobby/Billy berms

Two million folks collectively holding their breaths throughout south Louisiana this weekend will no doubt include Governor Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. I strongly suspect that, along with the welfare of their constituents, these gentlemen will be concerned about sand berm photographs released on July 26, by which time Bonnie will presumably have come ashore to die. LaCoastPost readers have already been suggesting satirical headlines.

My pre-Bonnie sense of oil impacts on Barataria marshes

I am no longer a BP blowout virgin, after spending six hours yesterday on a 24-foot outboard boat skillfully piloted by ‘Captain Zach’ out of the Myrtle Grove Marina on the west bank of Plaquemines Parish. Until this trip my commentary on the most serious oil release in the history of oil production in the gulf was strictly dependent on second hand reports from the media and trusted colleagues who’ve been in the field.

I was the guest of three staffers and an intern from the Gulf Restoration Network, accompanied by Mike Grunwald from Time Magazine. We explored the estuarine waters as far south as Grand Terre Island, along with a Zodiac inflatable boat carrying Jean Michel Cousteau, son of Jacque Cousteau and a film crew from California, filming a documentary on the state of the world’s oceans.

Our skipper described witnessing the initial invasion of crude oil far into Barataria Bay, followed by the deployment of thousands of workers on boats large and small, sucking up oil using skimmers with vacuum pumps and installing miles of booms. We navigated among a truly amazing motley flotilla of tugs, jack up barges, shrimp boats, oyster luggers crammed with workers and more airboats than I have ever seen.

This effort has obviously been successful and we had some difficulty collecting oil samples, until we stopped at a heavily oiled island vegetated by oyster grass with a few clumps of black mangroves.

July 22

I’m actually in the field today, in a real boat with folks from the Gulf Restoration Network and Mike Grunwald from Time Magazine, seeing part of the Barataria Basin with my one eyes! More later.

July 21

Ivor van Heerden, seer or shill?

This minipost was inspired by the following message that I received yesterday on Facebook from a long term friend and occasional contributor to LaCoastPost:

“Why are you not calling Ivor (van Heerden) out on this shameless video? Here is the opposite view of what Ivor is shilling. Come on Len; I count on you to be the truth sayer.”

My response follows:

“Thanks for this question, ___. I had heard about but not seen the BP videoclip featuring Ivor van Heerden and your question prompted me to share links to Ivor’s message and that of his critic.

Having known Ivor for about 35 years I’m not about to call him a shill or cast aspersions on his message. Neither do I suspect the motives of Nick Zantrop or doubt the sincerity of the opinions expressed in his post.

Ivor has become a lightning rod for coastal controversy. He’s now being pilloried for downplaying the evidence for damage to oiled marshes, despite the heroic status conferred on him post-Katrina for his candid criticism of the Corps of Engineers for the fatal failures of levees. How quickly they forget!

I don’t have the means to survey the coast and I depend on media footage, which is highly selective and biased toward drama. Knowledgeable informants who have spent many hours in the air and on the ground have told me that they agree with Ivor’s assertion that for the most part the oil has not penetrated deeply into the marsh or caused extensive dieback.

In my humble opinion, actions by the state including sand berms and rock armoring could ultimately be much more damaging than the oil. In spite of the egregious record of BP I’m trying my very best to be objective and fact based.

Your friend Len

In terms of the threat posed by residual oil, today The Times-Picayune published an article quoting Governor Jindal’s estimate that, with the Macondo well at least temporarily capped, total oil remaining in the gulf and threatening the Louisiana coast is estimated at 67 million gallons, or ~1.6 million barrels (bbls). In other words, based on the capacity of the Superdome to hold ~24 million bbls, an amount of oil equivalent to about ~6.7% of the volume of the Superdome is still floating around out there awaiting weathering, biodegradation or removal.

I’m anxious to discover whether the governor believes that the threat of this (finite) volume of residual oil, a small fraction of what has been released, still justifies the cost and environmental risk of continuing to dredge sand for the very expensive, potentially harmful and seemingly moot sand berm project. If I had his ear I’d say stop dredging, governor!

July 20

Louisiana political impotence

Stephanie Grace’s column in yesterday’s The Times-Picayune is a timely reminder of the historically weak political position in which Louisiana finds itself, even as we debate how best to protect and restore our deltaic coast, continue recovering from Katrina, reel from BP and face the end of lucrative government shipbuilding and space-based fabrication contracts. Ms. Grace’s column should warn the Jindal administration that its increasingly shrill anti-federal rhetoric is particularly ill-timed. It’s not like the old days when the Louisiana delegation wielded real power in DC. The imminent release of 2010 census numbers will likely further diminish the political stroke of the Bayou State. A go-it-alone approach re coastal policy makes absolutely no sense, politically, fiscally or ecologically.

July 18

Cain Burdeau with AP wrote a story published in today’s The Times-Picayune about oyster mortalities ssociated presumably not with oil pollution but the release of river water through the Carnarvon and Davis Pond diversion structures in Breton Sound and Barataria Bay areas, respectively. The water is being released to flush oil from the estuaries. Governor Jindal approved this measure, for which he deserves credit, in my opinion. Matthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune Oysters can tolerate small doses of fresh water for perhaps a couple of weeks, but they will die if they suck in too much. This open, dead oyster was photographed June 27 in Bay Gardene.

July 17

While we’re understandably preoccupied with the ongoing oil crisis that threatens the productivity of the Mississippi River delta and the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of gulf residents, it’s easy to forget the looming crisis that threatens the lives of billions of coastal residents worldwide. I’m of course referring to climate change and global warming. Yesterday the National Academy of Sciences, the top American authority on environmental challenges, just issued a report with extremely sobering implications. Here’s a one sentence summary:

July 16, 2010 — Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia, says a new report from the National Research Council. Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.

Andrew C. Revkin, who manages The New York Times’ DotEarth blog was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday and he discussed the implications of this report.

July 16

Oil blowout shut down (at least for now)

See Sandy Davis’ article in today’s The Advocate.

Len Bahr talks sand berms on MSNBC

After announcing (prematurely) that I would be interviewed on July 14 on MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olberman to discuss some of the many technical concerns with the notorious ‘BP sand berms,’ the interview was instead carried live last night. See the five minute interview here.

Oil stops gushing just as sand berms start failing

The apparent failure of Governor Jindal’s sand berms being constructed to protect marshes from oil has become national news. For example, it was reported here in the highly respected blog ClimateProgress.org. Louisiana gets another black eye for ignoring the advice of credible coastal scientists. Contrast that with Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser’s letter to the editor on July 14 in The Daily World in Opelousas. He challenged my credibility after I criticized the sand berms in a guest opinion column on July 6 in The Times-Picayune (Billy got the date wrong). I take as a badge of honor his characterization of me as a discredited coastal scientist.* Here are my favorite lines from his letter:

Mr. Bahr is a discredited coastal scientist that was sidelined during the Foster administration. Several hundred square miles of our state was lost and much of Plaquemines Parish eroded under his “leadership…While Mr. Bahr was not consulted, his record suggests no benefit from this consultation…The last thing we need in this crisis is for the Corps of Engineers — with their record of coastal failures — or a retired state scientist who let the coast erode at historic rates on his watch criticize and obstruct key strategies for stopping oil from ruining our way of life in Louisiana.

*In April 2003, as Governor Foster was completing the final year of his second term, he introduced me to the Louisiana Legislature as the recipient of the ‘Governor Jimmie Davis, You Are My Sunshine’ Award as the state employee of the year. A live oak was planted in my name in front of the Governor’s mansion. Robert S. Young, geology professor at Western Carolina University and outspoken critic of the sand berms, was interviewed last night about sand berms by Anderson Cooper on CNN’s AC360 (following new assurances by Billy Nungesser that the sand berms are working just fine, than you). I previously reported in error that Dr. Young’s part of the interview was left on the podcast cutting room floor. It’s definitely worth checking out. Yesterday’s The Times-Picayune published a letter to the editor by former state senator and physician Mike Robichaux on the sand berm issue that bears reading.

Revised State Coastal Master Plan

Mark Schleifstein reported in today’s The Times-Picayune that the state’s coastal master plan is under revision. He describes the revised plan as being influenced by ideas proposed by independent coastal scientists. Wow, there’s a radical idea! EDitor’s note: July 2010 Daily Miniposts from 7/1 to 7/15 can be found here.