Workers scraping oil-drenched sand from the beaches of Matagorda Island.
MATAGORDA ISLAND, TX — Recovery efforts continue weeks after a barge accident in the Houston Ship Channel dumped tens of thousands of barrels of oil into Galveston Bay. That oil kills wildlife and damages the environment. But some are worried the cleanup itself could also disturb the ecosystem along the Texas Gulf Coast. Nowhere is that threat more apparent than in theĀ Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
Every morning this week, hundreds of workers have gone out toĀ Matagorda Island, a part of that refuge, to try to remove the oil. On a recent tour organized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the response team appeared to work with great care, gingerly scraping thin layers of oil-drenched sand away with shovels, then depositing it into nearby excavators for delivery into larger dump trucks. Over ten tons of sand has been removed so far.
Randal Ogrydziak, the U.S. Coast Guard captain who is one of the coordinators of the spill response, likens the painstaking process to shoveling a gravel driveway after a snow storm.
More than 150,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil spilled into the Houston Ship Channel on March 22, 2014 after a collision between an oil barge and a ship.
Workers use ATVs, tractors and large dump trucks on the island’s beaches to clean up the spill.
The island is a wildlife refuge for migratory birds and several endangered species. It’s also home to alligators like this one.
Tons of oil have been cleaned up from the island’s beaches.
The island is an important stop for migratory birds.
Nancy Brown with Fish & Wildlife observes a whooping crane in the distance
The attempts to clean up the spill are having an environmental impact of their own.
Within days of the spill, the spread of the bunker fuel was apparent. Oil was detected 12 miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, March 23, and globs of tar and oil were seen along Texas City shores and beaches in the area.
Cleanup efforts are being organized by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and officials say they are at least several weeks away from fully containing the fuel.
Mose Buchele took the photos above of the spill’s impact on Matagorda Island. Check back tomorrow for his story on how the cleanup effort istelf couldĀ disturb the delicate ecosystem and endangered wildlife of the Gulf Coast.
NWF hopes BP settlement money is used to rehabilitate species like this pelican based on scientific research.
In the aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill, the worst in US history, the Gulf Coast is still adding up the costs of the disaster on coastal species and the ecosystem as a whole.
In the National Wildlife Federationās updated annual report on the status of the Gulf Coast, the foundation lists several criminal and civil cases brought against BP and Transocean. Some have resulted in settlements of up to $2.5 billion and some are still pending.
Lacey McCormick, a representative for NWF, says the organization is concerned that money could be misspent as it slowly trickles in.
āOur concern with the RESTORE Act dollars in particular is that we need to make sure that this money is used to restore the Gulf of Mexico and is not spent on pet projects that will not help — and may even harm — the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico,” McCormick says.Ā Continue Reading →
US Coast Guard Lt. Dave Wood with volunteers on Galveston Island
Volunteers Warned Phones with Photos of Oiled Beaches Could Be Confiscated
When a barge carrying fuel oil collided with a ship last month off Galveston Island, hundreds of people began signing up to help. For days now, volunteers have been walking the beaches looking for oil slicks, tarballs, and injured wildlife. Their reports are helping officials pinpoint where to send clean-up crews.
One of the volunteers is Kelli Stoveken from Seabrook, a community 20 miles up the shoreline of Galveston Bay from where the barge collision happened last month.
āI grew up in this area. I worked summers on a shrimp boat in Clear Lake. I donāt want to see anything happen to it,ā Stoveken said.
She was among a dozen volunteers who gathered early last Friday morning at the old Galveston County Courthouse. Under the coordination of the Galveston Bay Foundation and the U.S. Coast Guard, they were checked in, given photo IDs, and lectured on the do’s and donāts of being a volunteer āsentinel.” Continue Reading →
A rig contracted by Apache Corp drills a horizontal well in a search for oil and natural gas in the Wolfcamp shale located in the Permian Basin in West Texas. A successful petition in Denton could bring fracking bans to communities around the state.
Come elections in November, the city of Denton could be split between two very different futures.
The Denton Drilling Awareness Group (DAG) recently got enough signatures on a petition to place an ordinance banning fracking within city limits on local ballots. Though other communities in Texas have passed restrictions on fracking, a moratorium on drilling activity within Denton could spur the rise of similar legislation across the state.
If the ban passes it will likely provoke a precedent-setting legal battle that would help clarify the authority of local governments over oil and gas operations in Texas. Continue Reading →
Russell Gold, author of a new book on fracking, says that this drilling revolution is "transforming the United States."
If you ever talk about the surge in oil and gas drilling in Texas and the rest of the country by calling it a “boom,” you might upset someone in the oil and gas industry. That’s because if you call it a “boom,” that means at some point there’s going to be a “bust.”
“This revolution is transforming the United States,” Gold writes. “To a remarkable extent, this once-obscure oil-field technique defines the nation’s economic and environmental future.” A hundred new wells are drilled and fracked every day, he writes.
Gold sat down with David Brown of KUT’s Texas Standard to talk about why this boom is different, and some lessons for the oil and gas industry going forward. Take a listen:
‘The Boom’ hits bookshelves (both virtual and real) this week.
A jointly-owned oil rig atop the Eagle Ford shale south of San Antonio.
But That Could Spell Trouble for Texas’ Drilling Boom
From the first geyser to burst from the salt domes of Spindletop to the Texas fracking pioneer George Mitchell, whoĀ helped unlock massive oil and gas deposits in shale, the Lone Star State has always been willing to gamble on drilling. And the bets are big. The latest boom has been mostly the work of companies and investors with access to plenty of capital — it’s estimated each oil well in the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas costs between $5 and $10 million to drill.
Now, with a minimum investment of $80,000, one Texas company is offering you your very own oil well. Oil Boom USA, a subsidiary of Texas oil and gas company Nakoma Petroleum, is inviting investors into the oil well game. Why? Because it’s an “unequaled tax shelter” and “exciting and fun,” according to the company’s website.
But opening up drilling to more than just oil and gas companies could signal trouble for the industry.Ā As Michael Webber, Deputy Director at the University of Texas’s Energy Institute, explains to KUT’s Texas Standard host David Brown, oil well investing is “pretty good on the way up, but it could be pretty bad on the way down.” Continue Reading →
Update 10 p.m. Tuesday:Ā The Fort Worth City Council has delayed for one week a vote to permanently restrict outdoor watering to twice a week.
Council member W. B. Zimmerman asked for the additional time to educate the public about proposed conservation plans.
Sal Espino, who represents District 2, was opposed to the delay. He said: “I would be in favor of moving forward with this ordinance, imperfect as it may seem to some, and then later changing it or tweaking, because we’ve already been doing twice per week watering.”
Original story:Ā Since last June, Fort Worth has been restricting outdoor watering to twice a week because of drought conditions. Those measures may become permanent if the City Council adopts a proposed water ordinance Tuesday night.
But as water usage is down, water rates are going up. Continue Reading →
Cooling towers of a nuclear power plant in Grohnde, Germany. Texas Governor Rick Perry says he wants the state to come up with a solution for disposing of or storing spent nuclear fuel.
The storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste is a tricky process, both from a safety and political point of view. As a result, that waste is now piling up around the country with nowhere to go. And Texas Governor Rick Perry is wondering if perhaps the Lone Star State could give it a home.
In a letter to the leaders of the state Senate and House, which you can read below, Perry says that Texas has “no choice but to begin looking for a safe and secure solution for HLW [high-level radioactive waste] in Texas.” Perry attached a 49-page report he commissioned from a state environmental agency that says that a facility for waste in Texas is “not only feasible but could be highly successful.”
The letter, first reported by Asher Price in the Austin American-Statesman today, lays out what have become familiar arguments from those hoping to make Texas a home for the nation’s unwanted isotopes: the federal government isn’t following through on its promise to take care of it, states paid the feds to fulfill that promise and got cheated, and Texas can do it safely (and, it would follow, profitably).Ā Continue Reading →
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