[firstcoastkite]

Thanks for the updates Rick. I have been following the news closely on this one, as it has potential impacts all the way up the coast to St. Augustine eventually. Sure, noone wants to eat fish contaminated with oil, but I am sure we do not want to be kiteboarding in it either!

It is amazing to me that the federal government has not taken control of this situation already and plugged the well? BP has virtually no interest in capping the well and stopping the leak, and has repeatedly tried to capture the oil so they can profit from it instead of doing the right thing. The relief wells are just another way of guaranteeing that they can capture the oil from this huge reserve. I saw a report that they could make $500 billion off this one well if they can capture all of the oil.

So everything they have tried so far has been unsuccessful, and there is no guarantee that the relief wells will work either? They won't be completed until mid-August anyway. By then the Macando gusher will make the Exxon Valdez disaster fade into the background. If it continues unchecked they say it will flow for 7 years.

I have a degree in Environmental Science with a M.S. in Chemical Oceanography, and studied hydrocarbon (oil) breakdown in marine sediments in Tampa Bay. There are naturally occuring bacteria in the marine environment that eat oil, and will break down the lighter components of the crude over time. I have even read about biologically engineered bugs that can be introduced into spills with added nutrients to enhance bacterial degradation, but first you have to stop the flow of oil. You can't continue to clean up a spill that keeps on coming?

Learning about the environment is a depressing endeavor, because you realize that SO many things we do destroy the natural environment around us. From septic tanks draining through porous sand directly into estuaries, to drainage canals pumping fertilizers and pesticides direction into our intracoastal waterways from our finely manicured lawns, these are things that are under our control. BP is the one that created this problem in the first place, and now we are depending on them to fix it for us? Yes, they are the ones that have the expertise to work on the well, but who is calling the shots? I smell a rat, and it is a BIG one.