Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Spill

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This entry has been substantially updated (January 2020)

It was in April 2010 that the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform exploded, releasing almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the next five months.  The oil reached the coast 50 miles away, and coated 11% of Louisiana's coastline with crude severely damaged over 1,300 miles of Gulf shoreline. 

The Saltwater Marshes of Louisiana are unlike other coastal regions: instead of a beach pounded by waves, the marshes represent a a tattered-lace pattern of grass-secured bogs and inland waterways.  Much of the waterways are, of course, the estuaries of rivers such as the Mississippi, the Atchafalaya, the Calcasieu, and so on.  There are a large number of canals, such as the Intracoastal Canal, that crosshatch the marshes and admit saltwater much further inland. Cordgrass is a major feature of the landscape; it covers the ground and its roots prevent erosion, while catching runoff of fertilizers and other chemicals.

The oil sank into the soil, killing most of the grass in the affected areas and launching a renewed period of erosion.  The PNAS study (reference below) mentions that the grasses heroically held back much of the oil, but suffered worsening retreat as a result of the  root destruction.

This area is unlucky in that it's in a part of the world where land use has been taken for industrial applications by several generations of developers: sugar, cotton, petroleum--all part of globalized extractive industries, under urgent pressure to squeeze revenues from this luminously beautiful land.  While the Deepwater Horizon disaster was the biggest release of oil into the ocean, ever, it is part of a long history of industrial devastation by the oil industry in Louisiana.

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SOURCES 🙵 ADDITIONAL READING

B.R. Silliman, J. van de Koppel, M.W. McCoy, J. Diller, G.N. Kasozi, K.E. P.N. Adams, 🙵 A.R. Zimmerman, "Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP–Deepwater Horizon oil spill," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 109 (28) 11234-11239 (10 July 2012)

Ed Yong, "Mixed Report for Oiled Salt Marshes," The Scientist (25 June 2012)

Deborah Dardis 🙵 Pat Pendarvis, "Louisiana's disappearing wetlands," Louisiana's Oil: the Environmental and Economic Impact--Southeastern Louisiana University (12 July 2010)

ADDED:  Victoria Macchi, "Half a World Away, Vietnamese Build Lives on the American Bayou" VOA News (15 Sep 2015); embarrassingly anodyne text, but the photos are interesting.  Unfortunately, this is most of what I could find about the remaining Vietnamese fishing community in the Marshland area.

Andrew Nikiforuk, "Why We Pretend to Clean Up Oil Spills" Hakai Magazine via Smithsonianmag.com (12 July 2016); a little heavy on the sanctimony, but reasonably informative

"Effects of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on Coastal Salt Marsh Habitat," Office of Response and Restoration (23 November 2016)