An oil spill on the Mississippi river has closed traffic on the river. Over 400,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil spilled when a barge split in half. I've worked with No. 6 fuel oil in the past. We called it Bunker C. It is a very heavy oil the consistancy of peanut butter that is or was used in ships as thier fuel. I've cleaned several large tanks with residual oil and it's no fun. The stuff is so thick you have to spray it with diesel to got it soft enough to scrape. In spite of wearing gloves, moon suit and respirator the stuff manages to get on your skin and clothes. It doesn't smell too pretty either. Just glad I didn't do too many of those tanks.
Mississippi mud?
Oh and a bit of a news flash. In spite of the best efforts by the clean up crew they'll only be able to soak up about 10% of the spill. The rest will sink to the botton and poison the bottom feeder fish and critters. That's not me that's just the facts of how things work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
well why should the East and West coastlines get all the good oil spills---lets share the wealth of the energy runoff our society has. (just being sarcastic here)---its unfortunate that it happened, but---think about the radioactive and really poisonous chemicals being transported via trains, trucks as well as river barges though our cities------(shudder)---on second thought don't think about it.
Gary (aka old dude)
http://threescoreplusten.blogspot.com/
Nasty shit, Bunker oil.
Think tar, that is what it reminds me of, we clean tanks like that where I work, thankfully I don't have anything to do with that end.
So 396 thousand gallons of that shit is going to lay on the bottom, slowly working it's way back to the Gulf, poisoning everything that even gets near it.
Nice.
Oh, not good. Not good at all.
Step by step we are ensuring our own demise. Step by step.
Is there nothing that could clean up the bottom? Suction tubes maybe, or is it really that thick?
Oh it's really that thick. To really clean it up would involve removing at least 1 foot of bottom sediment. The problem? The spill is several hundred feet wide by 98 miles long! You do the math.
Sorry to hear it...I am sure the Republicans are already denying there is any damage from the spill just as they claim not one drop of oil was spilt due to Hurricane Katrina.
Polishifter
I might have mentioned that a couple of coworkers went down to do clean up work for an oil co. even before they started with the houses down there. Yep profits before people it's the republican way.
Post a Comment