How do you even begin to clean a coastline where each linear mile might be 20 miles of shore?

[Stinky The Clown]

Here's the Louisiana coast. It is tidal marsh. It is the nursery of life in the Gulf.



As bad as was the Exxon Valdez spill, the coast affected was relatively regular with, for the most part, a single wave line.



Not so the Louisiana coast. It is tidal marsh that connects to the famous bayous. The tidal water doesn't border that extreme coast a few miles up a single river. For each linear mile of coast, how many miles of actual shoreline are there? Five? Twenty? A hundred?

I can imagine washing a sand or gravel beach. I can't even contemplate the magnitude of steam cleaning such a fragile estuarial ecosystem.



It seems to me the coast in that part of the world is like a sponge that we will be saturating with oil for miles and miles inland. It will fairly absorb it. Drink it in as it takes one final draught of this horrible liquid.

And then it may die.

Mother Earth will be crying for years at what *WE* have wrought upon her. What *WE* have taken from her.



Yes, WE.

Mankind.

The good of us and the bad of us.

Our Mother, Earth.