Little harm from the Gulf Spill?

U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk (The New York Times)

According to this article in the Times, the U.S. government will announce tomorrow that “three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”

It seems to be a little bit premature to make such a broad statement.

Didn’t a total of 5 million barrels of crude oil from Deepwater Horizon enter the Gulf of Mexico? Wasn’t the leak capped only last week?

The newly released government report asserts that of the total amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, “about 26 percent of the oil released from BP’s runaway well is still in the water or onshore in a form that could, in principle, cause new problems.”

The spill has already caused huge amounts of damage and I fear that the damage from the Spill in the Gulf will continue to unfold for some time. The fallout for wildlife, fisherman, and the overall way of life for people living in the Gulf States could be significantly altered for a very long period of time.

The local economies of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, driven by tourism and the harvesting oysters, clams and shrimp will not exactly bounce back from this. If you are in a restaurant ordering oysters in the near future and you discover that they’re from Gulf waters, will you hesitate to eat them? I suspect that many people would.

While it is a blessing that the oil leak has been stopped and BP’s efforts have paid off in the long run, it is somewhat surprising to see the government release a report minimizing what has happened.

I sincerely hope that most of the damage from the oil can be contained and mitigated over time.