U.S. COAST GUARD
Seaman Zach Vanderhoof and Seaman Jonathan Quichocho take a water break while fellow crew members work on
the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Walnut July 2. Walnut has been skimming oil off the coast of Florida, Alabama and
Louisiana since its deployment to the Gulf of Mexico from Honolulu.
Coast shoreline had oil on it. That number did not represent shoreline that had already been cleaned.
“We are doing everything we can to fight it at the
source and on the surface,” Austin said. “We have fire
boom to try to burn as much of it as we can. We have
skimming vessels. We have fishing vessels that have
been outfitted with skimmers. We have booming. We
have people cleaning up on the beach,” she said.
The Coast Guard is getting more resources in the New
Orleans area to protect the marsh lines from erosion. For
oil already in the marshes, scientists are studying the best
way to remove it without disturbing the wildlife.
As of press time, July 15, the situation remained in
flux. BP was testing a new custom-designed relief cap
it had placed atop the well. The tests had been delayed,
first, over concerns that the cap might further damage
the wellhead and, later, to allow BP to replace a leaking
piece of equipment.
If successful, the cap was supposed to stop virtually
all of the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. It was
intended as a temporary fix until relief wells that are
meant to ultimately plug the leak are completed some
time in August.
By the Numbers
As of early July, the oil spill response effort from all agencies and companies involved included nearly 46,000
people — including more than 2,500 Coast Guard
active-duty and Reserve personnel — 3,190 vessels,
more than 640 barges and 550 skimmers, 109 aircraft
and more than 3. 5 million feet of boom (633 miles). A
majority of the resources and personnel were stationed at
the drill site or in Louisiana, with the rest dispersed
throughout Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.
As of press time, the most conservative estimate,
based on 1. 5 million gallons per day, was that more
than 130 million gallons of oil had leaked into the Gulf
from the well. Five states — Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida — had been affected by
the spill thus far. About 5 percent of the federal fishing
waters in the Gulf of Mexico had been closed or
restricted for fishing and tourist activities.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, passed after the
Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska, clearly defined the roles
of oil companies and the responsibilities between the
Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) as they relate to oils spills. Anything off
