When 1+1=5: the Oil Slick During Hurricane Season

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu expressed concern about how the Deepwater oil spill could be lifted by hurricane force winds and storm surges to become a tidal surge of slime over inland areas. “The oil that’s in the water is either going to be on the marshland or the land that it touches, the challenges are great,” he said. Ron Kendall, an environmental professor at Texas Tech University, told National Geographic that a major hurricane could deliver oil to downtown New Orleans. My friends in Louisiana told me that they see oil slicks the size of Manhattan moving through the Gulf Coast, creating dead zones where fish and the birds that feed on them cannot survive. Should the residue from the spill be pushed deep into coastal marshes, which slow and sometimes block storm surges, low-lying areas such as New Orleans will be even more vulnerable to major storms for the foreseeable future.