Some bad news in general for the power industry and the American environment as a whole. A recent report out of New Orleans, Louisiana has it that some oil is washing up on shore.
It might not seem like a big deal, after all wasn’t the BP oil spill huge? It is bad, though. There’s an oil sheen reportedly stretching 100 miles into the Gulf of Mexico. The water samples containing oil (petroleum hydrocarbons, oil, and grease, actually) were well above the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s standards for clean water.
According to the Coast Guard, this oily substance is caused by the Mississippi River’s flow and not from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.
It’s troubling that Louisiana faces oil contamination from the north as well as the south, from the BP spill. Is it’s situated at the mouth of the Mississippi, the state serves almost like a drain for all the sediment and other materials in the Mississippi’s lengthy flow.
If Louisiana’s present struggle with oil contamination isn’t compelling enough evidence for looking for non-petroleum-based energy sources, I don’t know what is. Our hearts go out to all those still suffering from the state’s tragic disasters.
