I find it highly unusual that the “experts” found tarballs on four beaches in the Keys. And now the tests of the tarball samples, which could have been air shipped instead of sending them on a jet to deliver them, still can’t confirm where they came from. A friend indicated that the oil will undergo changes as it is carried in the currents. I am not convinced the tarballs weren’t from the BP Blowout. DV
Posted on Wed, May. 19, 2010
BY TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA And CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
TIM CHAPMAN/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Jennifer DeMaria picks up garbage off the wild shoreline on Big Pine Key on Wednesday.
News spread quickly Wednesday that tar balls found on beaches in the Lower Florida Keys were not from the Gulf of Mexico spill, a welcome reprieve for residents still fearful about the fate of their vacation mecca.
The development was tempered by a Coast Guard announcement that “a small portion” of Deepwater Horizon’s oil slick had entered the Gulf’s loop current and could reach the Florida Straits in seven or eight days. Or, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association bulletin reported at day’s end, “the oil may get caught in a clockwise eddy in the middle of the gulf, and not be carried to the Florida Straits at all.”
It all added to an air of uncertainty about how and when the Sunshine State would grapple with fallout from the gulf catastrophe that could threaten both the state’s fragile ecosystem as well as its lifeblood industry: tourism.
“That’s a concern and we are monitoring it,” Gov. Charlie Crist told The Miami Herald editorial board, adding that state officials still have no fixed date on when spill pollution might hit the Keys, or anywhere else. The governor said he had been in touch with federal officials, among them White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett. He said he could deploy up to 2,500 National Guard members, if need be, under a state of emergency he declared last month for the Florida Panhandle — and was considering widening the emergency sector to include Monroe County and possibly Miami-Dade.
Wednesday’s developments offered a mixed message — relief on the one hand that the catastrophe had not yet come to Florida, but dread that it still might come. The Coast Guard outpost in the Keys revealed that it had rushed samples to its lab in Groton, Conn., by Falcon jet from Miami and determined that 50 or so three- to eight-inch tar balls did not come from the Deepwater Horizon.
It said the findings were conclusive, even as the source of the spill that spawned the tar balls remained unknown. Specially trained pollution-control experts scooped up the hazardous waste on Monday and Tuesday in four locations: Smathers Beach in Key West; Big Pine Key; Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park, and the Fort Zachary Taylor State Park.
On Wednesday, Jeff Bryant, 44, was among a knot of swimmers at a near-empty beach cleared by rain showers at Fort Zachary Taylor. “The tar balls aren’t from the Gulf, but we still could see oil remnants here,” said Bryant, a Key West resident who was gripping flippers and a heavy oxygen tank. “I’m hoping for the best, but my mind keeps going to the worst-case scenario.”
Monroe County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Becky Herrin, likewise, said she was relieved to learn that this week’s oil contaminants hadn’t come from the Deepwater Horizon. But, she said, “You have to keep in mind we’re still preparing for the possibility and keeping a close eye.”
And so Keys environmentalists redoubled efforts to organize coastal cleanups to clear the shores of litter that, if mixed with contaminated oil, could become toxic along the 120-mile string of islands that stretch south of Miami, part of a fragile interdependent ecosystem of mangroves and seagrass. “Preemptively removing artificial debris from the shoreline of the preserve will reduce potential impacts from oil, and it is good for the environment in any event,” a Nature Conservancy of Florida statement said, asking volunteers with kayaks and canoes to help clean up Little Torch Key on Saturday.
From Washington, Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose district includes the Keys, lamented that the tar ball discovery had triggered “premature panic” and issued a stern warning: “It is imperative that the Coast Guard and other national agencies work to ensure that information related to the path of the spill is delivered in a timely fashion.”
Constituent Jodi Weinhofer, president of the Keys Lodging Association, reported that the anxious tourist industry was in “wait-and-see mode” with “all the plans in place on how to manage this.” She added that she was assured that the Coast Guard lab finding reinforced earlier NOAA reports that the currents had not yet brought the slick from the oil spill to South Florida. “The good news is that the information that we’ve been getting is accurate,” she said. “And that’s big. It’s really encouraging.”
Miami Herald staff writers Sergio Bustos, Jennifer Lebovich and Kenny Malone contributed to this report.