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By Megan Breckenridge, Staff Writer
SULLO & SULLO, LLP
HOUSTON—On April 20, 2010, an explosion on a deepwater drilling rig 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana launched what could be the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The Deepwater Horizon, a half-billion dollar rig owned and operated by Swiss-based Transocean, Ltd and leased by British Petroleum PLC (BP), sank, leaving a subsea well spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.
For over two months residents of the Gulf Coast and around the world have watched with bated breath, waiting for the spill to be capped so that true clean-up and recovery efforts can begin. But it hasn’t happened yet, and news concerning the accident has been mostly bad. Numbers have been fudged, relief missions have failed, blame has been tossed around, and all the while oil continues to spew into once vibrant waters.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry has said that the state is prepared to respond to any effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill along the coast. Though oil has yet to reach Texas shores, the State Operations Center has remained at an increased readiness level and the state continues to work with federal and local authorities to track the spill and prepare contingency plans. The Office of the Governor participates in daily conference calls with the White House, Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and gulf state governors.
If oil does reach Texas, it is expected to be in the form of weathered tar balls, which cannot be prevented by boom deployment and would require aggressive physical removal. Texas’ General Land Office (GLO) has five coastal offices equipped with boats, trucks, trailers, ATVs, skimmers and well-trained staff to assist with response activities.
To date, no fisheries have been closed along the Texas coast because of the spill, and the Texas Department of Agriculture is working with grocery stores across the state to promote consumer awareness that both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Texas Department of State Health Services have declared Texas seafood and shrimp safe. State beaches are also expected to remain open for recreation and business for the duration of the summer.
Though not all states along the coast have been as fortunate as Texas, there is hope that the Gulf will recover if the flow of crude is stemmed in a reasonable amount of time. Using history as a guide, we can glean hope from the story of the Ixtoc I oil spill in the Gulf of Campeche, which started on June 3, 1979 and took 10 months to cap. It spewed an estimated 30,000 barrels per day that suffocated Mexican beaches with a thick layer of crude oil and eventually spread to 150 miles of Texas beaches as well. Experts at the time said the environment would never recover, and no one doubted their assessment.
But in a recent story published in the Miami Herald, deep-sea biologist Luis A. Soto said, “The environment is amazingly resilient, more so than most people understand. To be honest, considering the magnitude of the spill, we thought the Ixtoc spill was going to have catastrophic effects for decades. But within a couple of years, almost everything was close to 100 percent again.”
Also optimistic is Dr. Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for the Gulf of Mexico Studies as Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. In an article penned for the July/August issue of Tide magazine, he writes, “"The Gulf ecosystem is resilient and has an amazing capacity to come back from hurricanes, droughts, floods, and, yes, even oil spills. Unlike the cold-water ecosystems to our north, where lives are long and growth slow, or the tropics to our south, where little changes and one day is much like the next, the Gulf is dynamic and adaptable. Plants and animals can quickly reproduce in huge numbers and tolerate a broad range of extremes."
The Gulf has done a good job coping with the abuses of man, McKinney says, maybe too well, and as a result we have taken it for granted. But, he concludes, “The second reason we will come back from this spill, and why I can be optimistic about the future, is because of all the people who both care about the Gulf and are willing to stand up for it."
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