Doing exactly the wrong thing

[izquierdista]

It's really interesting to watch how people work very, very hard to do exactly the wrong thing when faced with a problem. I put myself on mailing lists of volunteers to help out with the BP oil spill, and today I was notified about this cleanup in anticipation of oil moving their way:

Dear Volunteers,

Thank you for your patience in allowing us to respond to the BP Oil Spill with a coordinated and safe volunteer program. We’ve received numerous emails asking why volunteers haven’t been mobilized to assist with oil removal at this time.

The first step in the fight against oil is to reduce the amount of debris in the potential impact zones to the west of the current oiled shorelines. Debris and trash that collects on our shorelines can potentially get covered in oil and make the clean-up of these natural areas even more complicated. In anticipation of oil moving westward, we are planning a Beach Clean-Up project in Cameron Parish.

This project will include the removal of debris, both natural and anthropogenic, from the shoreline to make the removal of oil less difficult and reduce the amount of hazardous material we will have to dispose of once affected by the oil spill. In addition to picking up trash, we will be raking and moving the organic debris from the waterline to past the high tide line. The last volunteer project in Lower Jefferson Parish was a complete success and turned out to be a great asset now that the Grand Isle area is being affected. This is a pre-landfall clean-up; there will be no handling of any oil contaminated material or wildlife.

(shortened somewhat from the original, but relevant sections intact)

All of the beach response I have seen so far has men in HAZMAT suits scooping it up into plastic bags, probably to be chauffeured to some landfill where the oil can take its time to leach into the ground water. The volunteer effort above is going to make their job easier by removing anything that could soak up oil that washes up on the beach.



Let me take all of you back to Chem 1 and let's review some remedial chemistry. Crude oil is toxic mainly due to its reactivity, and what is the one way to remove all the reactivity in a barrel of crude oil? That's right, completely oxidize it. Burn it. Turn it into CO2 (forgetting about global warming for a minute). Put it in a pile where aerobic microbes can metabolize it.

No, don't clean the beach. Bring in dumptrucks FROM the landfill. Spread cubic yards of yard waste to soak up the oil: tree trimmings, lawn clippings, newspaper, cardboard, hay (like the two yokels on YouTube are proposing here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZsMxQOiLQU ). Keep dumping it below the high tide line until oil and the tide have pushed the mess up to the high tide line. Then you can take care of it. NO! Put that plastic bag down, send the garbage truck away empty. We are going to rake the oil soaked mess above the high tide line and do some chemistry here, an oxidation reaction.

We could just burn it, but that would be a dirty, smoky, sooty fire spewing dioxins for miles. No, it needs to oxidize on its own time. Inoculate it with microbes which will break it down. Think of it as a BIG compost heap contaminated with a small volume of crude oil. (Now you see why we need LOTS of yard waste on the beach.)

What will happen if we follow this course? There will be berms of mulch decaying above the high tide line all along the affected coastline. You will feel like you have to walk through a landfill to get to the beach. But then an amazing thing will happen. Microbes breaking down the oil (and the vegetation) will sporulate, insects will eat the spores, birds will come and pick the pile over for insects and crap out seeds on the pile. The seeds will germinate and plants will grow. After a few months, the pile will turn into a berm of life.

[izquierdista]

1. OK, if you still need more convincing

Check out this Scientific American article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-microbes-clean-up-oil-spills

The most important quote from the whole article: "As long as there is oxygen around, it will get chewed up."

[The Croquist]

4. Thanks for trying to help. You are better then me but...

I've found that going through channels is just not worth the effort.

A few weeks ago I was picking up trash at a local park (I need the exercise) and a couple of teenagers walked by and asked if I was "a volunteer". I was taken aback because although technically I was a volunteer I just picked up a trash bag and started picking up trash. I never called the county. I didn't get an EPA approval. I just picked up trash.

The kids thought I had to have gone through the government. They also turned down my offer to let them help.

[izquierdista]

5. Good for you

And by all means, pick up all the metal, glass, plastic, that stuff is not going to absorb oil. But leave the paper, cardboard, seaweed and other organic matter there to do its job.

I think we are going to find, five years down the road, that the places where the most was done will be the worst off, and the places that were ignored (probably due to poverty) are going to be the most improved. The cure to this spillage is not going to be man battling against nature, as he usually does. The cure is going to require man taking a back seat and letting nature heal itself. The most man can do is assist nature, and how exactly should he do that?

1) Start immediately pumping air into the waters of the Gulf, say 300 feet down, with diffusers to aerate the water. The oil eating bacteria need to breathe, and scientists measuring the summer dead zone are already saying that it is going to be HUGE this year with this bacterial bloom.

2) Research what trace elements are needed and start broadcasting them. This is a poorly studied topic, but in each biozone, there will be a limiting nutrient, lack of which will grind the oil degradation to a halt. I already mentioned oxygen, but scientists should also be measuring things like iron, potassium, phosphorous and make controlled experiments to see if those need to be seeded as well.

3) Once it hits land, it needs to be soaked up on porous material and allowed to degrade naturally. Again, inoculating the piles of debris and maintaining favorable conditions will make the difference between decay in a few months or in a few decades.

[BeFree]

2. Makes good sense

Oil, when it forms a skin, hardly dries and is slower to decompose, or decay.

Increase the surface area of oil and it dries faster and decays faster.

So a pile of twigs coated with oil will increase the surface area of oil and begin drying which hastens decay.

Natural vegetation is good for the wetlands. Naturally occurring and naturally decaying vegetation is the base of the food chain.

Once the oil is in the wetlands the only option is to let whatever natural processes there are to work on cleaning it up. And putting the mess above the high water mark will help the drying and decaying process happen faster.

[glitch]

3. K & R nt