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TagsBut Bob Martin has team monitoring the slick's course
While it is highly improbable the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will have any effect on the Jersey Shore or the state's fishing industry, the state Department of Environmental Protection is taking precautions.
Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin Tuesday announced the formation of a special Gulf Spill Team to closely monitor the situation, to create a scientific model of the likely path of the contaminated waters, and to develop a response plan.
The team will consist of DEP officials and experts, plus outside scientists who are offering their services to the state.
"Right now, we are very optimistic the oil will not reach New Jersey and will not affect fishing nor the summer beach season,'' Martin said. "Our beaches will be open for business, with the summer season kicking off this Memorial Day weekend. However, we are keeping closeMartin said the DEP, State Police, state Emergency Management, the state Office of Homeland Security and others are working to put together a plan.
Scientists have told the DEP it is not likely the oil will reach New Jersey beaches, making it clear that for the oil slick to hit the Jersey coast, "it would require a sequence of unlikely events.''
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been the lead agency in dealing with the situation nationally, providing daily briefings to the New Jersey state government and other states that could be affected by the spill.
"We want to gather the best scientific data available to help guide us,'' Martin said. "We have to be fully prepared to protect the interests and residents of this state. But we expect, at this point, that our beaches will be open and we'll have a great summer season in New Jersey.''
The DEP has been monitoring the oil spill situation on a daily basis, as well as receiving briefings from federal scientists. Additionally, the DEP has been working with scientists on staff, plus experts from Rutgers University and Stevens Institute of Technology, to map the potential flow of the oil spill and develop models of the potential flow of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico, and possibly up the East Coast.
Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey, has criticized a number of Martin's actions but he supports the spill watch.
"This very important. We need to up date and develop new contingency plans on how to deal with oil spills. Currently our plans are based on spills from refineries and tank farms on land or a tanker in the river. We need to come up with new emergency plans to deal a spill coming in from the ocean. We need to do this not only because of the spill in the Gulf but because of the potential to drill of the coast Virginia .Hopefully we are out of the loop from the gulf spill but a spill off of Virginia puts us directly in the cross hairs. The only oil we ever want to see on our beaches is Coppertone."
It has been over a month since the oil spill began and so far only Louisiana has unfortunately suffered pollution.
Scientists are mapping a variety of possibilities, creating models for best case to worst case scenarios, taking into effect water currents, depths, temperatures and salinity, plus weather conditions, including potential hurricanes and tropical storms.Rutgers has a "glider'' device currently in Gulf waters trying to help scientifically analyze the situation in lower depths.
There is a possibility the oil will head west from the Gulf of Mexico, away from the East Coast, scientists have told the DEP. It is also possible the oil could move east, towards Florida and the Gulf Stream, which would eventually pull it north, towards the Carolinas. That would move the flow towards Cape Hatteras and then a likely flow east into the Atlantic, away from the coast and towards Europe.
But there are unknown factors, including storms, which could cause some portions of that oil plume to break off from the main body and head north, towards New Jersey, according to scientists. If that unlikely scenario occurs, the oil could sporadically show up at isolated sites along the New Jersey coast, probably in the form of tar balls hard — shelled, soft-centered objects — which, depending on the size and proximity to the shore, could environmentally impact the state's beaches, fisheries and wildlife late in the summer.
"We are running models every day. Trying to forecast what will happen,'' Prof. Josh Kohut at Rutgers' School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. "We are seeking independent validation of what is going on.''
The White House announced Tuesday that President Obama will travel from Chicago to the Louisiana Gulf Coast on Friday to assess the latest efforts to counter the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The Obama administration has mobilized one of the largest responses to a catastrophic event in history, with more than 1,200 vessels in the region and more than 22,000 people, including scientists from both the public and private sector, working around the clock to mitigate the oil’s impact.
Kohut and Alan Blumberg, director of ocean engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology's Center for Maritime Systems, are both assisting the DEP in assessing the oil spill.
The White House announced Tuesday that President Obama will travel from Chicago to the Louisiana Gulf Coast on Friday to assess the latest efforts to counter the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The Obama administration has mobilized one of the largest responses to a catastrophic event in history, with more than 1,200 vessels in the region and more than 22,000 people, including scientists from both the public and private sector, working around the clock to mitigate the oil's impact.
— TOM HESTER SR., NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
