O-mama - Opinionated Moms

The BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast is now being coined the worst environmental disaster in American history.  Adm. Thad Allen, coastguard commander, reported that approximately 11,000 barrels of oil a day is being collected as a result of last week’s containment cap and recovery effort.  However, federal studies have shown that there is an estimated 12,000 to 25,000 barrels spewing from the ruptured well each day, with a permanent fix which now may happen before August if BP's proposed cap solves the problem   If not, we will have to wait until the two relief wells are completed. A bigger problem the coast guard now faces is the intricacy of cleaning up the oil which has broken into hundreds of thousands of patches, and is spreading out in so many different directions. This will require additional vessels equipped with skimmers and booms to block oil from reaching the shore. Allen added that it would take years to mitigate the impact of the spill on the marshes, beaches, and wildlife on the Gulf Coast.  President Obama called upon BP to be quick and responsive to the needs of the local communities affected by the spill, and added that BP will be subject to constant, vigilant oversight from his administration.

MOMism: “This is just the tip of the iceberg.” We sometimes try to explain to our kids that what we see at first glance, may not give us an accurate picture of an entire situation.  And sometimes, when we make a bad choice, we set off a chain of events, with a snowball effect that is difficult to recover from.  The initial spill now looks like that tip of the iceberg…the massive ecological recovery effort from the spill is the larger challenge at hand.