Fuel Spill Closes Mississippi--and the Door to Off-shore Drilling

Advocates of off-shore oil drilling have been caught flat-out lying again and again about spills and disasters because they know what spills mean--publlic sentiment against their wishes is too much to overcome.

Nearly 30 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans southward could be closed for days after a fuel barge and a tanker collided, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

[SNIP]

The accident left a sheen of oil over much of the river and its banks, and skimmers have been deployed to suck the oil off the river's surface, Blue said.

However, the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways.

This kind of story needs to be spread around and amplified--not only can everyday river traffic cause spills of fuel, gasoline, or oil but so can the weather.
Just ask John McCain--who has now cancelled his visit to an existing off-shore oil rig because the tropical storm now moving inland is too strong.

"Dolly" has been rated a category 2 Hurricane--dangerous enough to keep McCain away, who would have reaped the rewards of standing on the deck of an off-shore oil rig in the wind and the rain to show how safe it was.

Instead, Americans got a stark reminder of why oil and fuel spills are so important to remember when it comes to this ridiculous rush towards off-shore drilling. Which, by the way, wouldn't solve anything much at all.

--WS