As icky sneaky toxic crude permeates Louisiana marches, now experts tell us the eco-stain won’t ever come out. No really. The oil assault has been mounting steadily, BP poised dutifully with “booms” and it isn’t working. Exasperated oil spill cleanup professionals are not a bit surprised, one has even released a video throwing down expletives as much for humor as heartbreak. Accusations go beyond BP, calling the US Coast Guard head a “shameless piece of shit, and so’s President Obama if he can’t see that.” –But brightly, it’s all in the delivery.
About the looming oil invasion.
We can’t see the oil, but we can see the bright orange boom ringing our coastlines in apparent preparedness against the oil. When you watch the video you’ll learn that the boom is colored bright orange for you to see it, for the media cameras to allay our concerns that the prophylactic is in place. But from this video you’ll see that the boom is being deployed like a movie set facade, with little hope of effectiveness.
The key is in the “catch bassins.” Boom isn’t just Maxi-pad we stick into the water like a quicker-picker-upper. It’s meant to corral the oil into catch bassins. Absent those receptacles the oil is left for waves to push it up and over like trench warriors going over the top, wave after wave, to hit the beach, “all of it.”
You’ll note the major concern about oil spills is landfall, and it should be. Oil floats and thus isn’t as much a disaster on the surface until it hits populous surfaces. Of course, BP’s use of chemical dispersants breaks up the oil while it’s in the water, rendering the underwater a deadly war zone too.
The dispersant of choice has long been banned in the UK for its toxicity. COREXIT is named not after a chemical compound but as a phonetic abbreviation for what it does, Corexit “corrects-it” haha. It’s a cuncoxen applied to cover up the visible horror of a spill. HIDEZIT is apparently its nickname, acknowledging the darker humor.
Watch this video and you’ll know how boom technology works and you’ll understand what we need to ask of BP and government oversight.
The schoolroom-like lecture is delivered by an anonymous professional with straightforward simplicity and humor, but with palpable emotion. You hear the break in her voice especially as the oil industry is taken to task for its utter disregard for what’s happened.
There’s not enough boom, rope or anchor on this planet to properly boom the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There should be. It’s not that much of an expense. Really it’s not.
They said they were ready. Having enough materials to perform fucking proper fucking booming is part of being ready. They’re not ready, are they?”
This message could be subversive reassurance that oil spills can be contained, and thus, offshore drilling needn’t be restrained, but let’s burn that PR slick when we come to it.
I’m also a little wary when the preface mentions the misrepresentation of the magnitude of the blowout but pegs the flow at “up to 50,000 barrels.” Experts who’ve all along predicted it was 100,000 quantify that with “at minimum.”
OR, the video is a self-serving appeal from a booming-trainer for more funding to teach more boomers. Well that would be money better spent.
Here’s your chance to be trained in how to deploy oil spill booms without being sworn to silence by BP. If you’re anywhere near the coast, get out there.
This very funny piece is labeled Booming School 101. A better title might be “Fucking proper fucking booming” or subtitled, oil spill cleanup done fucking right.