It's really interesting to watch how people work very, very hard to do exactly the wrong thing when faced with a problem. I put myself on mailing lists of volunteers to help out with the BP oil spill, and today I was notified about this cleanup in anticipation of oil moving their way:
Dear Volunteers,
Thank you for your patience in allowing us to respond to the BP Oil Spill with a coordinated and safe volunteer program. We’ve received numerous emails asking why volunteers haven’t been mobilized to assist with oil removal at this time.
The first step in the fight against oil is to reduce the amount of debris in the potential impact zones to the west of the current oiled shorelines. Debris and trash that collects on our shorelines can potentially get covered in oil and make the clean-up of these natural areas even more complicated. In anticipation of oil moving westward, we are planning a Beach Clean-Up project in Cameron Parish.
This project will include the removal of debris, both natural and anthropogenic, from the shoreline to make the removal of oil less difficult and reduce the amount of hazardous material we will have to dispose of once affected by the oil spill. In addition to picking up trash, we will be raking and moving the organic debris from the waterline to past the high tide line. The last volunteer project in Lower Jefferson Parish was a complete success and turned out to be a great asset now that the Grand Isle area is being affected. This is a pre-landfall clean-up; there will be no handling of any oil contaminated material or wildlife.
(shortened somewhat from the original, but relevant sections intact)
All of the beach response I have seen so far has men in HAZMAT suits scooping it up into plastic bags, probably to be chauffeured to some landfill where the oil can take its time to leach into the ground water. The volunteer effort above is going to make their job easier by removing anything that could soak up oil that washes up on the beach.
Let me take all of you back to Chem 1 and let's review some remedial chemistry. Crude oil is toxic mainly due to its reactivity, and what is the one way to remove all the reactivity in a barrel of crude oil? That's right, completely oxidize it. Burn it. Turn it into CO2 (forgetting about global warming for a minute). Put it in a pile where aerobic microbes can metabolize it.
No, don't clean the beach. Bring in dumptrucks FROM the landfill. Spread cubic yards of yard waste to soak up the oil: tree trimmings, lawn clippings, newspaper, cardboard, hay (like the two yokels on YouTube are proposing here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZsMxQOiLQU ). Keep dumping it below the high tide line until oil and the tide have pushed the mess up to the high tide line. Then you can take care of it. NO! Put that plastic bag down, send the garbage truck away empty. We are going to rake the oil soaked mess above the high tide line and do some chemistry here, an oxidation reaction.
We could just burn it, but that would be a dirty, smoky, sooty fire spewing dioxins for miles. No, it needs to oxidize on its own time. Inoculate it with microbes which will break it down. Think of it as a BIG compost heap contaminated with a small volume of crude oil. (Now you see why we need LOTS of yard waste on the beach.)
What will happen if we follow this course? There will be berms of mulch decaying above the high tide line all along the affected coastline. You will feel like you have to walk through a landfill to get to the beach. But then an amazing thing will happen. Microbes breaking down the oil (and the vegetation) will sporulate, insects will eat the spores, birds will come and pick the pile over for insects and crap out seeds on the pile. The seeds will germinate and plants will grow. After a few months, the pile will turn into a berm of life.