Oil Spill

Imagine a barge running aground off Thomas Point, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Chesapeake Bay and coating vegetation and wildlife in the area for miles.Anne Arundel County's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is preparing for such a disaster by building an oil-spill cleanup lab to care for wildlife caught in such an event. Using $200,000 in grants and private funding, the SPCA is developing the new center, to be called the Nature Center, which will include the oil-spill cleanup facility as well as exhibits and workshops that will educate students about the bay and the environment, David Branchini, executive director of the SPCA, said.

Scientists from the National Aquarium and the Johns Hopkins University say they've found low but potentially harmful levels of toxic oil contaminants in the Gulf of Mexico months after the Deepwater Horizon well blowout was capped. Erik Rifkin, interim executive director of the aquarium's conservation center, and Yongseok Hong, a post-doctoral fellow at Hopkins, say that using devices that mimic the way fish absorb contaminants in their environment, they've detected oil-related chemical compounds on the Louisiana coast that traditional water sampling methods mostly missed.

Oh, BP says it's responsible, and they're willing to take their "lumps." But I think it's entirely possible we'll be the ones priming the pumps. Peg McAllen

Traffic on southbound Interstate 95 was delayed north of the Fort McHenry Tunnel tollbooths while crews cleaned up oil spilled due to a two-vehicle collision, a Maryland Transportation Authority Police spokesman said. Injuries were reported in the crash, and one person was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center with non-life-threatening injuries, said the spokesman, Sgt. Kirk Perez. The incident was reported just before 7 a.m. and traffic was backed up seven miles at 7:45 a.m., he said.

This week, students at North Harford Middle School wrote a series of letters to the editor about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The following is a selection of their work. The rest can be viewed online at baltimoresun.com/bpletters. End the oil spill blame game On April 20, a BP drilling rig on the Gulf Mexico exploded, causing the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. The oil rig was leased to BP by Transocean, and Halliburton was working on sealing off the well before the blast.

Throughout the Gulf of Mexico, there are no more blue waters, no free moving animals — just black. Only oil, spilling out more each day, damaging everything, almost as if it was an underwater fire. Animals and plants are at risk more than ever, and who knows, maybe we are next. Despite the efforts of BP, nothing is really helping to stop the oil for good. But, as people argue over whose fault the spill is, they could unite to end the spill. The government, BP officials and all other companies involved in the spill should set their perspectives straight and think of what is important now. Even though I may just be a rising 9th grader, it is obvious that we are only worried about money, since that's all that matters right?

On April 20, a BP drilling rig on the Gulf Mexico exploded, causing the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. The oil rig was leased to BP by Transocean, and Halliburton was working on sealing off the well before the blast. Everyone pointed fingers, and accusations flew back and forth. An entire investigation has been launched, but that is the least of our worries. Every day, 12,000 to 25,000 barrels worth of oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Animals wash up on shore black as night because they are covered in oil. The beaches that were once white from sand have turned black.

I am a beach-goer, a tree hugger, and a seafood-lover. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico really affects me. I see the oil-covered birds, black as coal, on TV. I hear all the news stations talking about it. I think of all the fishermen not being able to put food on the table because of the dirty, oil covered shrimp and fish in the ocean. Also, the shop owners down in Florida, waiting for tourists to come pouring in, but being let down, because who wants to go on vacation to dirty, ugly beaches?

Oil is demolishing the oceans on the Gulf of Mexico. The BP oil spill is damaging our beautiful, clear waters. The once crystal waters are now getting black and greasy, yet we still aren't doing that much to prevent more oil from spilling. So government! Stop pointing fingers and trying to save money and just work together to stop this disaster! We need to use our money and resources for this worthy cause. Just think of all of the poor, helpless animals dying at a steady, alarming rate!

For those of us from Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is not really a spill. It's a gusher. It is a deep wound in the minds, hearts and, yes, the pockets of anyone whose life has been enriched by the beauties of the Gulf Coast. The wildlife, the natural waterways, even the alligators: All those things we love are under dire threat. My home town is Sulphur, La., a relatively small place with a powerhouse football team and a heavily oil-dependent economy. My father, uncles, grandfather and some cousins have all put in time working the oil fields of rural Louisiana, the rigs along the coast or the refineries that dot our cities.

Friday marks the 41 s t anniversary of Earth Day and provides the customary opportunity to take stock of the environmental movement in this country. Unfortunately, for all the talk of the greening of America, it's been a pretty rotten 12 months for the planet and its defenders. Just look at the bookend events: A year ago this week, the Gulf of Mexico suffered the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Whatever the lessons learned from that trauma, it hasn't resulted in big changes to the country's oil-dependent energy strategies.

A northbound section of Interstate 83 in Baltimore was temporarily closed Friday while city fire and state environmental crews cleaned about 15 gallons of spilled oil near Calvert Street, according to officials. The northbound lanes of the expressway between Fayette Street and Maryland Avenue were expected to reopen by 12:45 p.m., according to fire spokesman Chief Kevin Cartwright. There were no reports of injuries. Cartwright said a truck that was carrying waste oil began leaking near Calvert Street and up to North Avenue, where its driver exited onto Sisson Street.

Lime Kiln Middle School seventh-grader Michelle Wong cannot talk with the animals, but she can imagine what they might say, and she figures few would have kind words about last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She recently wrote a short play about a few sea creatures affected by the spill that was submitted in the Arena Stage 12th Annual Student 10-Minute Play Competition. With more than 800 entries submitted from area middle and high schools, Michelle didn't figure she had much of a chance at winning.

Like many who heard about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the students of Camp Achieve in Baltimore were upset to learn of the damage it caused, especially to the animals that were forced from their habitats. So they did something about it. First-through-fourth-graders at the summer academic program contributed to a handmade quilt that was donated to benefit the Art vs. Oil Spill charity auctions held on the Gulf Coast this fall. "The kids were really excited about the project and to help out," said Brenda Wade, founder and executive director of Achievement Services, the nonprofit organization that operates Camp Achieve.

Six months ago, on April 20, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded in a fiery mass that killed 11 men and led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Around 200 million gallons of oil — about 11 times more than the Exxon-Valdez spill — flowed into the Gulf of Mexico over the next 87 days before BP's fifth or sixth attempt to stop the well finally worked. This catastrophic spill spread across hundreds of miles of coast despite the best efforts of more than 40,000 cleanup workers, thousands of boats, the involvement of the Nobel Prize-wining physicist who heads the Department of Energy, the input of our nation's national energy laboratories, and BP's expenditure of $8 billion on cleanup.

Days after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, officials at BP were still assuring the Obama administration their estimates showed the blown-out well was only leaking about 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the surrounding waters. That was the figure the administration initially used to describe one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, even though other government experts and independent scientists were already warning that the spill was likely much larger than oil company officials were letting on. In the weeks and months that followed, the government repeatedly underestimated the size of the spill, giving the public a distorted impression of the extent of the damage while making its own and BP's efforts to contain the oil seem more effective than they actually were.

In his op-ed, "Gulf spill a lesson nation must heed" (May 10), Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin makes the argument that environmental groups have been slow to articulate: The BP oil spill is not just a failure of the oil companies or federal regulators — it is a failure of our energy policy to shift to clean energy sources. The recent string of energy disasters — the fatal natural gas plant explosion in Connecticut in February; the deadly Massey mining collapse in West Virginia in April; and the ongoing BP oil geyser in Louisiana — represent more than just the physical risks of the energy extraction.

In an interview on National Public Radio this week, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said that the Gulf oil spill was an example of the free market working properly. He reasoned that BP had the most to lose from the spill, namely $100 million per day in costs. And thus, BP had the greatest incentive to clean-up the oil spill. His conclusion is odd: The market functions properly when an oil company has repeated safety violations, ultimately causing an oil rig explosion that causes a loss in lives and perhaps the greatest environmental catastrophe in history.

The oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico may have pinched the supply of big Louisiana blue crabs that some Maryland restaurants rely upon, but there's apparently been no shortage of crustaceans to steam, crack and pick this summer, as the Chesapeake Bay has produced its best harvest in years. "We didn't need Louisiana crabs this year," said Larry W. Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. "We've got so many crabs now we can't sell them. " That's in part because "demand has been iffy" at times, said Jack Brooks, co-owner of the J.M. Clayton Co., a long-time seafood business in Cambridge that packs and ships 30,000 pounds of crabs and crabmeat daily from spring into fall.

The way Rena Steinzor sees it, the nationwide egg recall, the Gulf oil spill, the lead discovered in children's toys, Toyota cars suddenly accelerating — these incidents are all related. Steinzor, a University of Maryland law professor and author, contends that the recalls and catastrophes all stem from a systemic regulatory breakdown in the U.S. She and Sidney A. Shapiro of Wake Forest University just published the book, "The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and The Environment.