Gee, wonder what they’ll figure out at LSU?

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/bp_grant_money_expected_to_fin.html

Louisiana State University’s School of the Coast and Environment will be the first recipient of a grant from BP under what could become a $500 million, 10-year program to gather scientific information about the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the response to the spill on the marine and shoreline environment of the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials announced Monday.
Christopher D’Elia is dean of LSU’s School of the Coast and Environment
Christopher D’Elia, dean of LSU’s School of the Coast and Environment, said he expects the first money to pay for research into what has become one of the most troublesome concerns of the spill response — determining the effects of using hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic dispersants on oil at and below the surface of the ocean.

D’Elia said the school had proposed that and several other research areas to BP officials during a recent meeting, and the company seemed most interested in the dispersant work.

“They seemed most concerned in finding out where the dispersants were going, whether there was a good mix of water, oil and dispersant, and the effects of the dispersants on oil and then following through the recovery phase,” he said. “We gave them a pretty big dollar amount of possible things to fund, and I think they’re still trying to mull over which one of the options to fund.”

D’Elia said he and other LSU officials, in discussing the grants with BP, insisted on a process that would assure that, while BP could choose the general topics to be studied, the actual research would be conducted under the traditional scientific peer review process, with the results published in established scientific journals.

“We expect to be asked, ‘How do we know you’re not being pressured to be mouthpieces for BP?’ and the answer is that they may help us select the research topics, but the work is done by us and its publication is in our province,” he said.

D’Elia pointed out that he and other LSU scientists were the first to raise concerns about the use of dispersants a mile below the Gulf surface at the well site. Those concerns were adopted by Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries Secretary Joe Barham and then by Gov. Bobby Jindal, who demanded that dispersant use be dropped by BP.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last week requested that BP use less toxic dispersants than the two chemicals they have been using, and after BP officials insisted that the two versions of Corexit it was using were still the safest alternatives, Jackson on Monday ordered the company to significantly reduce the use of dispersants on the Gulf water surface, and to carefully monitor the effects of their use in the deepwater environment.

At the same time, BP had asked LSU scientists to come up with ideas on how to study the dispersants’ effects on the environment, D’Elia said.

BP spokesman John Curry confirmed that the broader research program would be overseen by a committee of independent scientists that will be chosen by the company. The studies it produces also are expected to be used in federal-state natural resource damage assessments required under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

“This will be a robust research program to investigate the impacts of dispersed oil and the dispersants,” Curry said.

He said between $2 million and $3 million will be given to researchers at a number of colleges and universities in states along the Gulf of Mexico, in addition to LSU, to begin the program.

“They’ll be studying pathways for the dispersed oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident and the impacts on the seabed, water column, water surface and the shoreline,” Curry said, “and also will be considering the interaction of dispersed oil with tropical storms, and will be considering technical improvements to the remediation process.”

D’Elia said the injection of research money into Gulf Coast universities comes just as the scientists at those universities have been attempting to persuade federal officials to make better use of their research abilities in determining the depth and breadth of the oil spill effects.
“I’m not sure the feds realize that the real experts on our coastal wetlands are really down here,” he said. The exception has been Jackson, he said, a New Orleans native with a degree in chemistry from Tulane.

Special thanks to Richard Charter