Scientists skeptical about rush to build sand barriers

Source: LA Times

By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
June 5, 2010 | 4:42 p.m.

The frenzied response to the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has featured any number of wing-and-a-prayer options from engineers and elected officials. But a sand-barrier plan that skeptical scientists are referring to as "The Great Wall of Louisiana" has been the most politically charged.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and angry parish presidents have hammered the Obama administration in past weeks over what they characterize as a glacial federal approval process for the state's plan to construct 128 miles of sand berms, dredging up 102 million cubic yards of seabed in the process, to bolster the state's barrier islands and absorb oil before it reaches sensitive coastal marshes.

The Army Corps of Engineers gave final approval last week to a scaled-down version of the project after rejecting the state's original proposal, which could have cost as much as $950 million and taken as long as nine months.

But as Jindal and other politicians celebrate the partial victory, coastal researchers warn that the project can't be built in time to help — even if it had been approved when first proposed last month. And scientists warn that it may have unforeseen consequences.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-berms-20100606,0,7544795.story

nt

Make every attempt to filter the oil out of the water.

No use building sandcastles on the seashore.

Even small children have learned that no matter how well sandcastles are built, the water always wins.

Seems Bobby Jindal is no smarter than a small child?

"The looming tropical storm season has some scientists questioning the expenditure of money and resources on an experimental project. Although the berms will be 300 feet wide at their base, tapering to 25 feet at the top, a sand wall is not considered a robust structure.

The berms "will not survive even a low-intensity tropical storm in the northern gulf," said Jack Kindinger, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If we have one next week, the berms will be gone. We have to be careful not to do more harm than good.""

If it takes a gun to their heads.

will level these berms like so many children's sand castles. Sounds to me like a Jindal scheme to get the gummint to shovel $$$ down LA way. Insanity...oh wait, Haley Barbour prolly wants in on it too. Yep, insanity. I got yer berm raht chere :puke:

The corporate media wanted to play this narrative that Bobby Jindal is this hero struggling against the evil federal government, so the media downplayed complaints by the Audubon Society that the berms would probably take to long to build, and may waste precious sand that could be washed away in the summer storms.

So, Bobby gets to mug for the cameras, and the media suppresses information that the berms may not really be helpful.

He's as flaky as sister Sarah queen of BS.

I knew all along there were reasons the LA Wall was not exactly what the media was making it out to be!

Again, were is this so-called Liberal Media I am hearing about? The Liberal Media is like BIG FOOT...Many claim to have seen it but but it has yet to be caught.

Where was this LA Times story when Bobby Jindal and Fox News were running "Build The Berms Now!" coverage. The federal government studies the proposals, agrees, THEN the LA Times runs this story when the Audubon Society has been questioning this proposal for weeks!

just another paper tiger

will it go when it gets all tarred up and gets washed into the Gulf by storms. What happens to the place they take the sand from? Seems the scientists are skeptical too. So we will do this the American way - politics will decide to piss away over $300 million that would be better spent doing something to mitigate the economic impact on the neighborhood.

to build a sand barrier and destroy the rest of the sea floor ecosystem that hasn't already been devastated by the oil? Yeah, that sounds like a typical Republican solution.

a huge poured or reinforced concrete sea wall that would somehow be fixed in place along the shallow portions of sea bed or on shore. Of course that would mean that as the tides come in (and more particularly, during a storm), the water would build on the ocean side of it and would eventually dam the water (and any crude) thus raising the height (like a levy), leading to the stuff lapping over the top of it anyway.

Doing it with sand only is futile. So many Atlantic ocean beaches up the east coast have been forced to replace sand and sand berms after storms every year, and every year, much of this gets washed away again anyway.

Maybe use big nets suspended like fences along poles across certain areas, with the netting covered with absorbent material... although the problem with that would be that the material would need 24 hr/day monitoring and replacement of the material on it.

Republicans are so hilarious when they try to fix one of their fuck-ups years in the making. They blithely ignored the destruction of barrier islands for decades, now they want an unbroken chain -- in months! Piyush should take a clue from some of his bretheren in the old country - Naluvedapathy. From the Wikipedia entry:



Seems this poor village was more prescient than even the most forward looking Republican when they planted 80,000 mangrove saplings to protect the village from the ocean. Seems "Bobby" has been too assimilated into the American culture: rail against big gub'mint, but after the the milk is spilled, demand that the gub'mint provide sponges.

and turn it all into a millionaires playground at the same time