The Boom In Boom: Will Oil Spill Defenses Hold?BP says it's deployed millions of feet of boom to contain the oil menacing the Gulf Coast. But some experts and politicians worry that the boom won't hold up to hurricane season and that there's not enough manpower or supplies to stop the oil.
A crew replaces absorbent boom that's protecting a rookery on Saturday. BP says millions of feet of boom have been deployed since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last April. But others worry about whether boom can effectively absorb and contain a spill of this magnitude.
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Eric Gay/AP
One of the major lines of defense against the encroaching oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is boom. That's the kind of floating device that can soak up, contain and prevent oil from reaching beaches and delicate marshlands.
BP says millions of feet of boom have been deployed since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April. But a number of local officials are questioning whether boom works -- especially in a spill as large as this one.
Cleanup experts say the two main types of boom are the best tools available to keep the oil at sea and off beaches and sensitive habitats.
Oil has saturated the fringes of the delicate marsh grasses in the Bay Cocodrie at the southwestern edge of Louisiana. Boat crews wear white protective Tyvek suits as they lay down endless stretches of special boom.
"This is absorbent boom; the white stuff looks like a long stuffed tube sock. ... It absorbs the oil and traps the oil by letting the water flow in and out," says U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer John Miller.
Farther from shore, crews have placed miles of containment boom that's usually orange or yellow, Miller says. This type has a hard floating plastic top attached to a skirt that's designed to trap the heavy oil even before it gets close to land.
And on a calm day the boom stays in place and does its job.
Tattered, Tangled And Broken
But when the thunderstorms move in, waves easily crash over the booms, tear them apart and wash them onshore -- which only adds to fears, now that hurricane season has begun, that the booms will not withstand such storms.
A boat uses a boom and absorbent material to soak up oil in Cat Bay, near Grand Isle, La., on June 28. A tropical storm is expected to hit the Gulf and impede cleanup efforts.
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Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and wife Carole Rome Crist (right) stand with others during a Hands Across the Sand event June 26 in Pensacola, Fla. The event was staged across the nation to protest offshore oil drilling.
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Oil clouds the surface of Barataria Bay near Port Sulpher, La., on June 19.
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Workers adjust piping while drilling a relief well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
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A dolphin rises up out of the water near Grand Terre Island off the coast of Louisiana on June 14.
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President Obama stands with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (right) and Gulfport, Miss., Mayor George Schloegel after meeting with residents affected by the oil spill.
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Crude oil washes ashore in Orange Beach, Ala., on June 12. Oil slicks, 4 to 6 inches thick in some parts, have washed up along the Alabama coast.
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A volunteer uses a toothbrush to clean an oil-covered white pelican at the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Buras, La., June 9.
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A shrimp boat skims oil from the surface of the water just off Orange Beach, Ala., as a family enjoys the surf. Oily tar balls have started washing up on Orange Beach and beaches in the western Florida panhandle.
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Sand from a dredge is pumped onto East Grand Terre Island, La., to provide a barrier against the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, June 8.
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A dead turtle floats on a pool of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in Barataria Bay off the coast of Louisiana on June 7.
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Workers use absorbent pads to remove oil that has washed ashore from the spill in Grand Isle, La., June 6.
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Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn lifts an oil-covered pelican out of the water on Queen Bess Island in Plaquemines Parish, La., June 5.
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Heavy oil pools along the side of a boom just outside Cat Island in Grand Isle, La., June 6.
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President Obama walks alongside Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle (from right), U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is in charge of the federal response to the spill, and Chris Camardelle after meeting with local business owners in Grand Isle, La., June 4.
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A brown pelican sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast after being drenched in oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, June 3.
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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announces that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the BP oil spill. With him, from left: Stephanie Finley and Jim Letten, U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Louisiana; Ignacia Moreno, assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division; Tony West, assistant attorney general, Civil Division; and Don Burkhalter, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.
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The oil slick off the coast of Louisiana, seen from above.
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A worker leaves the beach in Grand Isle, La., on May 30. BP is turning to yet another mix of undersea robot maneuvers to help keep more crude oil from flowing into the Gulf.
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Protesters cover themselves with a water and paint mixture during a demonstration at a BP gas station in New York City on May 28.
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Workers clean up oil in Pass a Loutre, La. The latest attempt to plug the leak was unsuccessful.
Jae C. Hong, File/AP
Residents listen to a discussion with parish officials and a BP representative on May 25 in Chalmette, La. Officials now say that it may be impossible to clean the hundreds of miles of coastal wetlands affected by the massive oil spill.
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An oil-soaked pelican takes flight after Louisiana Fish and Wildlife employees tried to corral it on an island in Barataria Bay on the coast of Louisiana. The island, which is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as well at terns, gulls and roseate spoonbills, is impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
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A sign warns the public to stay away from the beach on Grand Isle, La. Officials closed the oil-covered beaches to the public indefinitely on Saturday.
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Pelican eggs stained with oil sit in a nest on an island in Barataria Bay on May 22.
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A bird flies over oil that has collected on wetlands on Elmer's Island in Grand Isle, La., May 20. The oil came inland despite oil booms that were placed at the wetlands' mouth on the Gulf of Mexico.
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Members of the Louisiana National Guard build a land bridge at the mouth of wetlands on Elmer's Island.
Patrick Semansky/AP
The hands of boat captain Preston Morris are covered in oil after collecting surface samples from the marsh of Pass a Loutre, La., on May 19.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (center) and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser (right) tour the oil-impacted marsh of Pass a Loutre, La. "This is the heavy oil that everyone's been fearing that is here now," said Jindal.
Gerald Herbert/AP
BP Chairman and President Lamar McKay (left), with Transocean President and CEO Steven Newman (center) and Applied Science Associates Principal Deborah French McCay, testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing May 18 on response efforts to the Gulf Coast oil spill.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
This undated frame grab image received from BP and provided by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee shows details of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has agreed to display a live video feed of the oil gusher on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee's website beginning Thursday evening.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee/AP
President Obama speaks with local fishermen about how they are affected by the oil spill in Venice, La., on May 2.
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Danene Birtell with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research tends to a Northern Gannet in Fort Jackson, La., on April 30. The bird, normally white when full grown, is covered in oil from the oil spill.
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Since the explosion, a third oil leak has been discovered in the blown-out well.
Gerald Herbert/AP
In this aerial photo taken April 21 more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Tendrils of oil mar the waters of the Gulf of Mexico in this satellite image taken Monday. An estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day are seeping into the Gulf, after an explosion last week on a drilling rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.
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Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish, says BP and the Coast Guard are relying too heavily on boom for the oil cleanup.
"The booms do not work," he says. "They're either overtopped or undermined; they're floating; in this weather today they are all washed up on the beach. So they're not working."
And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says BP hasn't hired enough people and doesn't have enough supplies to keep all the oil off so many miles of beach and marshland.
"There is not a person in the state of Louisiana that believes that either they have enough boom or they will deploy enough of it to keep this oil out of our wetlands. We have over 140 miles of wetlands that are oiled already," Jindal says.
Terry Adelsbach, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says resources are stretched thin. When out on a boat recently, he saw tattered, tangled and broken boom that had washed up on a small bird nesting island near Grand Isle, La. He guessed the mess had been there for at least a few days.
"There is a bunch that has broken free and, yeah, we need to get this boom out of here and get some clean absorbent boom placed," Adelsbach says.
Boom is not going to be the ultimate fix to clean up an oil spill this big, says retired Coast Guard engineer Thomas Coe. After the Exxon Valdez spill, he was charged with staffing and supplying oil cleanup strike teams around the country.
"But it is effective within its capabilities and it should be used. It just has its limitations, and it's not going to stop all the oil," Coe says.
'The War Effort Against The Oil'
BP says it has already used more than 2 million feet of boom to date. And with tar balls and oil washing up on beaches in Alabama and Florida, the demand has manufacturers working around the clock, says JoAnne Ferris of the Industrial Fabrics Association International, a trade group that represents boom makers and suppliers.
But she says buyers at BP and the Coast Guard are not moving efficiently or fast enough to take full advantage of American suppliers.
"We need to get organized. It's almost the war effort against the oil. So we need to get a system going so that we can solve this thing," Ferris says.
BP officials insist there is no shortage of boom and that they have nearly half a million feet in stock. But contractor Steve Smith, one of BP's cleanup experts, admits he might not always have the right kind of boom available.
"The best boom in the world is the boom that you have. You can always want better, but what we have we are utilizing," Smith says.
And with a definitive fix to stop the gushing of oil from the Deepwater Horizon well still months away, BP will undoubtedly be utilizing more boom well into the summer.
