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BP Oil Spill: Report from Biloxi, Mississippi

My wife and I spent three days in Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi, for the Southern Gaming Summit – the casino industry’s regional convention (my wife is a regulator for the Mississippi Gaming Commission, so it was “work” for her, vacation for me). We returned home to central Mississippi late yesterday, and the following is the oil spill report that I promised.

As I took in tranquil Back Bay from the Summit’s reception party at the IP casino’s 11th floor outdoor pool, I tried to imagine the 30+ foot storm surge Katrina had hurled into the Bay (destroying the Hwy-90 bridge and sloshing six feet of water into my Granddaddy’s old house on the south side of Kensington Drive).  Contrary to rumors I had heard, there was no whiff of oil in the air. That’s something at least. If the oil comes ashore in earnest, anyone without a respirator will be fleeing the fumes.

Staring out from the ocean side of the 20-something floor of the beautiful Beau Rivage Resort rising from Biloxi beach, you can see the two halves of Ship Island on the horizon ten miles out on a clear day.  Fort Massachusetts crouches on the north beach, as do innumerable blue crab in the clear south-side surf. Mostly buried in the sand, the crabs – big as your foot – scuttle away in droves as you wade through the transparent emerald water, sometimes giving your heel a startling pincher-nip. I was there with my wife and daughters last summer, courtesy of Ship Island Excursions, the family run ferry service in operation since 1926.

Biloxi’s ABC affiliate WLOX interviewed Captain Louis Skrmetta of Ship Island Excursions on May 3.

“Biggest concern is oil on the beach. It won’t be long now. I’m hearing reports or rumors about Cat Island already receiving oil, so I think it’s just a matter of maybe three or four days. But it doesn’t matter. It’s eventually going to get here,” he said, shaking his head.

Captain Skrmetta’s wife shares her husband’s concern and his love for this special place.

“I don’t want to say I’m depressed; I want to say I’m hopeful,” said Beth Skrmetta. “I have a lot of faith. I’m just concerned. I don’t know where we go from here.”

Please read the whole thing, at the link above. The worst case scenario would mean the end of a way of life for many, many people, and falling dominoes of economic and environmental catastrophe for the region. The feisty blue crabs, lungs clogged with oil, would die in droves.

The local news is wall-to-wall coverage. I learn that the swollen rivers in flooded Nashville and throughout that region are pushing high volumes of water out into the Gulf – one of a number of circumstances so far keeping the spill seemingly stationary, 50 or so miles off shore. The Louisiana bayou and the exquisite Chandeleur Island archipelago we already know aren’t so lucky.

A few strings of boom here and there in the water are all we can see from the Beau. Out several times again as far as Ship Island on the horizon, the thick of the black mess abides. There today, men wearing respirators lowered a towering, GPS-stabilized concrete and steel box (the “containment dome”) through a mile of dark water in an attempt to cap the main leak. According to the AP report engineers had to wait for the breeze to pick up before lifting the box off deck, for fear that a spark would ignite the suffocating cloud of fumes.

If this unique feat of engineering works, 85% of the flow will be stemmed. Two more steel boxes are in route.

Cross your fingers and pray we can fix what we broke. And after that, that we’re incredibly lucky with what’s already in the water.

B